Lesson in Loyalty
by Shanidar6387
Summary: The NCIS LA team finds themselves undercover at a university, attempting to infiltrate a radical right-wing group which is trying to put a violent end to diversity on campus, and eventually throughout the entire United States.
1. Chapter 1

Chapter 1 -

It had to be one of the weirdest undercover operations they'd ever experienced, Sam thought morosely. Thanks to a series of tips from a trusted source, well, a source trusted by Hetty, the entire team suddenly found themselves undercover in various locations in extreme northern corner of California. The town was in a mountainous area, and quite isolated. According to reputation, not to mention everyone he had talked to since he'd been here, when winter hit, the area might be cut off from the outside world for days if not weeks at a time.

The town itself was small. There was a university based in the town, which was the largest employer in the town. The local school district was a close second. While technically a part of California, the town had a reputation for being much more conservative than the rest of the state, in every possible way. The changing social climate caused by mandates from the state capital was causing a sense of resentment throughout the town. The university itself was more liberal, but not by much, still being quite conservative.

Major influences in the town were the numerous churches scattered throughout the streets. Sam thought that the last time he had seen so many churches in such close proximity to each other he had been stationed in Texas. They all seemed to be various denominations of Protestantism, strangely enough, and he wasn't entirely sure how they were able to tell them apart, but he had learned in his first couple of days here not to mention that to anyone. The citizens, especially the townies, were passionately devoted to their various religions; each convinced that their individual religion was the only true one in existence.

While the town had good ratings in many quality of life indicators, including crime rates and unemployment, there was a somewhat oppressive social atmosphere. People had been known to compare it to "Stepford". This fact, when combined with the isolation of both the campus and the town resulted in the university having personnel problems. While some people came specifically for the 1950ish atmosphere, there always seemed to be job openings on campus. Many people used the University for a First Job out of college. Once their resume had been augmented they moved on to something better, or at least something elsewhere.

Hetty's unknown correspondent had intimated that some of the local people were becoming very frustrated with the social and political mandates coming out of the state capitol in Sacramento. They were feeling like "their" community was being hijacked by bleeding heart liberals. While this was nothing unusual, Hetty's reliable source thought that these particular groups were organizing, and getting ready to make an effort to take their community back under their control. Sam wasn't sure how they would do this. He was also unclear on how they thought they could keep that control once they committed what was effectively treason. However, the minds of the plotters did not seem to be overly burdened by such worries. They seemed to think that once they broke the ice, the vast majority of the population, after being reminded of their true roots, would arise in united support for their group and put an end to gay marriage, affirmative action, and the lack of prayer in public schools.

Since the group was spread throughout the community, the OSP team was spread out as well. The university had had many openings, and Hetty, through her unspeakable connections, had even secured a couple of jobs within the town itself. Sam had taken a position with the university, in the Religious Studies Department, and was teaching three sections of the university's mandatory Comparative Religion class. He was out as a Muslim, which caused suspicion among most of the populace. He had actually become a bit paranoid about even doing his shopping in town.

Kensi had become a valued member of the Criminal Justice Department, and was teaching a couple of different classes on Forensic Science; including a graduate level seminar that had already attracted attention from the state crime lab, which was sending one of their top scientists to give a guest lecture. With her strong background in Forensic Science, she was doing very well in her new career.

Since it was never a good idea to separate Kensi and her partner, they were posing as a married couple, living in town. Deeks had ended up playing the faculty spouse with a surprising amount of aplomb, and had just gotten a job as a library assistant in the town's small public library. Kensi had had a field day making sexy librarian jokes, but with one of them working at the university, and the other in the center of the town, plus having every excuse in the world for seeing each other every day, and in private at that, they were going to be invaluable in keeping track of what was going on in both sides of the community.

Callen, on the other hand, was not nearly as happy, having found a job in the town's only grocery store, starting as a stock boy, but now having quickly moved up to a management position. The rest of the supermarket staff were led to believe that he was somehow related to the owner. He wasn't, not that he knew anyway, but he was learning a lot about the produce business, and complaining endlessly about the poor work ethic of the latest generation. At least he was the few times Sam had been able to talk with him. Unlike Kensi and Deeks, they didn't have a cover that leant itself to meeting with each other very often. They had all been warned that this was an extremely long term undercover, and were trying to find ways to get in contact with each other as well as the suspects.

The library was always a good meeting area, it was in the center of town, and attracted most of the population at one time or another. Sam had developed a taste for literary fiction, making sure to keep up with all the new best sellers. Callen, on the other hand, was working his way through the library's DVD collection. The library had a large selection of BBC crime dramas, and he was working his way through Midsommer Murders.

The grocery store where Callen worked was also a good spot for the crew to 'accidentally' run into each other. Sam had to talk to him about requesting special halal ingredients, and Deeks was cultivating a reputation as a 'Foodie', and always seemed to be in search of some bizarre ingredient Callen's store didn't normally carry.

Since the community was so religious, none of the members of the team had wasted any time finding churches to attend. Kensi and Deeks decided on a rather liberal Methodist church that had the reputation of being welcoming and accepting of outsiders. Because of its welcoming atmosphere, many of the people affiliated with the University attended this particular church.

Since there was not a mosque in town, Sam was attending weekly meetings of the Muslim student association that met at the University. They met weekly for in-depth studies of the Koran, and Sam found that with his knowledge of Arabic and his education he easily earned the respect of the Muslim students at the university. These students were a mixture of African Americans, and a few young immigrants from various areas of the Middle East and Asia.

Callen had begun attending, after being heavily courted by its members, a very conservative small church that was run by a charismatic working man. It had a reputation of being slightly (or not so slightly) fanatical and met three times a week. Most of the people in the church homeschooled their children, under orders from their reverend. He was concerned about the "liberal, godless" atmospheres in the public schools, and thought that having the children memorize the Bible was enough of an education. The twice weekly meetings were conducted at the restaurant he ran during the week. It featured a large room that may have been intended for parties, but was almost exclusively used for church meetings, prayer rallies, and home school group sessions.

The group they were targeting stood for returning America to a state they described as "True America". They described themselves as patriotic Americans, who were trying to undo the damage that generations of liberals had caused. They had problems with what they called the homosexual agenda, or 'rainbow jihad', which they felt was forcing its way into society, as well as the proponents of climate change, to give only two widely diverse examples. Apparently, global warming was a leftist conspiracy to limit the growth of business, along with EPA pollution guidelines, and restrictions on the disposal methods for various hazardous wastes. Callen felt that the members of his new church family would be good candidates for membership in this group. They shared many of the viewpoints of the group, but so did many other members of the community.

So far the undercover had stretched out to cover most of the fall semester. The team had moved in at varying times in the first week of August, or last in July, and Sam's students had just finished their mid-terms.

At first, not knowing which of the various groups in town might have nefarious plans, the team had spent a bit of time flailing around, trying to determine where their focus should be. They had originally considered the Muslim student group, but had ruled them out after the first couple of weeks. A loner student in one of Kensi's classes who had hinted darkly about 'big plans' had been revealed as a young man trying too hard to impress people. Finally they had begun to narrow their focus to the more radical members of Callen's new church home.

Meanwhile, at the public library, Marty Deeks was dealing with a recalcitrant person who wanted to use the library's public use computers. Their desire was being thwarted by a fatal combination of their own actions and the library's policies, not to mention the restrictions placed upon the library by the town's city council.

"I'm sorry Ma'am, but, to use our computers, you need to have a library card!" he exclaimed, trying to remain upbeat. "All I'm going to need to get you one is a picture ID, and something that shows you live in this county!"

"What," the patron, or rather proto patron, exclaimed with a certain amount of, in Deek's opinion, unnecessary hostility, "I don't have any ID on me! The library in the next city over doesn't require ID just to use their computers!"

Marty had already heard this several times. "Well, we are not really connected to that library, so we have different rules," he answered smoothly.

"You're both libraries, ain't you?" the patron countered. "This is the stupidest thing I've ever heard! I've lived in this town for sixteen years! I live so close I can walk over here, in fact, I JUST walked over here to get this damn library card and get on a computer and now you're telling me that I can't even get it! You hate me don't you? Librarians are supposed to help people and you are refusing to help me!"

His supervisor happened to be passing by on one of her mysterious missions. Marty turned to her in a silent appeal, hoping she would stop and help him out of his conundrum. She paused briefly behind the circulation desk and put on a professional smile before turning to the patron. "Ma'am is there something I can help with?" she asked.

"Yes, you can tell this idiot to put me on a computer!" the patron exclaimed, gesticulating wildly. "I can't believe that he's asking for a library card! I use the library at the next town over all the time and they never ask for a card! Why do you have to hire idiots?"

"Well, the library in the next town over does not ask for ID to use their computers," his supervisor allowed. "But we are run by the city council of our town, and they require us to have a positive ID on each person who uses our computers. We do have a onetime courtesy guest pass that can get you on today . . ."

Marty winced, he hoped internally only. He'd already tried this tack with this particular person.

"That's what I'm saying," the rude patron exclaimed, "Give me the guest pass!"

"Okay," his supervisor said, reaching for the stack of guest passes, "I just need a picture ID to let you have this."

"That's the whole point!" the patron exploded. "I don't have any fucking ID, how many times do I have to explain this? Are all of you so damn stupid you don't get it?"

"Ma'am," the supervisor said, "We have a lot of children in our library, so I'm going to have to ask you to moderate your language."

This did not go over well with the patron at all. "What the fuck do you mean, moderate my language? I can talk any fucking way I want to. Now give me the motherfucking guest pass and get the fuck out of my way!"

Marty's supervisor did not even flinch. "I cannot give out a guest pass without a picture ID. If you don't have a picture ID, there is no way I can possibly let you on one of our computers. And if you continue to use profanity, I will have to call the police and have you removed from the library."

Marty silently edged closer to the phone, in order to be in readiness when the patron finally snapped and came over the counter. He was trying to decide if it would be better for him to just take the patron down now when Catherine caught his eye and nodded to the small line forming behind the angry patron.

Marty edged over to the other circulation computer and gestured to the next person in line. Fortunately it was an older lady he already recognized, who came in about three times a week for books. He checked out the latest batch to her, printed out her receipt, and helped the man standing behind her get on the waiting list for James Patterson's new book, finishing out the line by checking out a huge stack of picture books for a young mother and her toddlers. He turned after this burst of activity to find that his supervisor was still being yelled at.

She made eye contact. "Marty, could you check the public computers and see if anyone needs to be called?" He nodded and went to the reference desk, checking the time management software for the ten or so public computers the library provided for public use. They were mostly okay, and for once there was not a waiting list of people trying to get on them. Maybe some people had been discouraged by the crazy woman still yelling at his supervisor at the circulation desk. In fact, as he glanced towards the doors entering the library he observed a couple walk in, pause to observe the women yelling obscenities at the librarian, and turn to walk out.

Once the public computers were back in good working order, he noticed that he had another line at the circulation desk. He groaned and went to take care of that line, sneakily checking the schedule to see who was going to relieve him at the desk. He wanted to know who to look out for. He also checked the time, and noticed that the id-less patron wannabee had been yelling at his supervisor for twenty minutes, and he still had an hour before someone would come and relieve him.

Finally the patron left, still cursing at his supervisor, but without the computer access she had so ardently desired. His supervisor helped him finish out the small line that had built up, answered the questions of the one person who had called on the telephone, and then turned to him and rolled her eyes.

"I offered her the guest pass," he told her, "but she had no ID, and it all went downhill from there."

"I know," she replied, "She was one of those people who think that if she throws a huge hissy fit she'll get her way. I really hate dealing with people like that."

"Do we get a lot of them here?" Deeks enquired.

"Not as many as in a big city library," she answered. "But public libraries, no matter where they are, attract their own special brand of crazy."

He was to remember that statement later as one of the truest he'd ever heard.


	2. Chapter 2

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of NCIS LA, or any of the characters.

I had originally rated this as M, because of the language. But on the advice of anonkp and further reflection have decided to move it down to a T rating.

To my French reviewer: yes, libraries are free, but most I have dealt with require some information from patrons in case items are not returned. Hence the requirement for an ID.

Chapter 2 -

Callen was making good progress in getting to know his new church family. They were a group that seemed to be trying to live in the past. While the majority of the people in the church were good people, they were resistant to change. They had a rosy view of the past, and a basic resistance to change. Since the past had been so good, they saw no need to change anything.

Within the church there was a group that seemed to be even more inflexible than the rest. These were the elders of the church. They were all going hunting the coming weekend, and had invited him along. This was apparently the apex of the social order in this church, and once you were invited to one of the hunting parties you might as well be one of the elders. The elders were the group that made all the decisions in the church, practically lived in the Reverend's pocket, and even decided important issues of church policy.

He had never really hunted much before; unless you counted the last time he had been undercover with a different group of white supremacists. He was thankful that he didn't really need to be too good at hunting. If he were too good it might be considered a threat by the other members of the group. He had been able to be honest and upfront with the information he had no idea how to hunt, and slightly less truthful when he said he'd always wanted to learn.

His cover, sticking as always as close to the truth as possible, had him growing up in Los Angeles as an orphan. He was able to tell the members of this group with perfect honesty that he had not had anyone to teach him manly skills. However, in his backstopping, the reason he was an orphan was that both of his parents had been killed in a robbery gone bad, leaving him alone at a young age. The first thing Deeks had asked was if he was supposed to be Batman, but somehow that particular comparison had come up, possibly that particular reference was too much in line with main-stream culture. The Reverend did not approve of any Hollywood movies, or at least not any that had been made in the last few decades.

It was Sunday, and the church service had just ended. The Reverend had given a stirring sermon to his followers. Callen had sat in the middle of the folding chairs that were set up in the dilapidated barbeque restaurant where the church services were held. The room also accommodated the biweekly church wide bible studies, as well as weekly bible studies targeting the various age groups and personal conditions of the churches members. When necessary, Callen had been told, they would even have homeschooling events in the big room. The next big event was apparently a homeschool science fair. The older lady who had sat next to Callen during the service had told him all about it before the sermon started. There was going to be a model of Noah's Ark, with information on all the animals who had not made it to the ark in time.

After the sermon, Callen made his way through the line at the food tables, holding a plate of food as he circulated among the other members of the congregation. There was mandatory pot luck after each of the services, and everyone was expected to bring a dish. Even single older men, who had no one to cook for them, were expected to bring a dish. Callen had made good use of his own grocery store and found some gourmet potato salad that all of the housewives in the congregation looked down their noses at.

However he noticed that it was gone before any of the homemade potato salad that they had brought. He thought that next time he would just bring cookies. Not gourmet cookies, either. These housewives were some seriously scary women, and he had no desire to piss them off. He made sure to take a sample of each other potato salad, and planned to mention how inferior the stuff he had brought was. That was a matter of survival, as far as he was concerned!

He kept a careful eye on the crowd, trying to observe his target, the Reverend without being too obvious. While his name was not exactly a secret, everyone that knew him, both in and out of the church, referred to him as just Reverend. Currently, the Reverend was standing outside the door, supervising the hot dogs that were being cooked on the large grill that was permanently attached to the outside of the building.

"Looks like you're a pretty good cook, Reverend, "he said, approaching the older man.

"I am not a cook, young man," the Reverend replied, with no discernible trace of humor. Callen smiled, and tried to pass his comment off as a joke, while the Reverend continued. "Cooking is for women, but grilling is a manly pursuit. I know you aren't trying to call me a fag, coming from the city like you do, but calling a man a cook is fighting words in this neck of the woods! Unless he gets paid for it, of course."

"That's good to know," Callen answered soberly, watching the elders of the church approaching them. They were a group of older men, each one of whom was much like the others, and he had some problems telling them apart. They were all older white men, generally stringy rather than fleshy, and with varying amounts of hair. He thought that maybe the hair would be the best way to tell them apart. Previously he had tried going by a combination of eye color and skin tone, but almost all of them had blue eyes, as well as the proverbial red neck complexion that showed the effects of too much time outdoors, and not enough sun screen usage. They would probably think that sun screen was part of a liberal conspiracy to insert mind controlling chemicals into their blood stream, he thought sourly.

The man Callen had been referring to as 'No Hair' immediately began chatting with the Reverend. He was asking when they could get together to finalize "those plans we've been talking about. 'Bald Spot', agreed, saying that they had a short deadline, and needed to get together as soon as possible. 'Fringe Guy' cut his eyes towards Callen, and mentioned that while they did need to get together, perhaps this place was a little too public for what they needed to discuss.

With this not so subtle hint, Callen realized quickly that his presence was superfluous, and muttering an apology, moved on, or attempted to. The Reverend stopped him. "You seem like a good man, a man who understands our concerns with the crappy way the world is treating real Americans these days." he said to Callen.

"Well, I try to understand," Callen said, trying to look modest. He wasn't sure that modesty was considered a good thing for men in this cult, but he was pretty sure that being an overly arrogant dick wouldn't do him any favors.

"I know you do," the Reverend stated. "Now me and these gentlemen have some things we need to discuss, but I promise that we'll bring you into the loop as soon as we can. Hopefully on that hunting trip we're all looking forward to."

"It truly promises to be an epic hunting trip," Callen agreed. "I only hope that I don't embarrass myself in front of you guys. Hunting is not something any of my foster fathers were into."

The Reverend shook his head sadly. "It's a shame that you weren't fostered with a good god-fearing Christian family!"

Fringe Guy joined in, "You're lucky you came out alive!"

Callen nodded, slightly shell shocked by their attitude, and took his plate of brisket with six different kinds of potato salad to an inconspicuous corner. He stood chatting idly with one of the older ladies of the church, as he kept a cautious eye on the Reverend and his hair-follicle challenged inner circle. He wished, as he stood there chatting with a charming older lady, that he had taken some of the classes on lip reading that Kensi had taken. He couldn't be sure, and really, without making it very obvious that he was staring, he wouldn't be able to be sure, but he thought that Bald Spot had just said the word 'explosion'. He tried mouthing the word himself, paying special attention to how his lips formed the word, and trying to remember if that was the same way Bald Spot's mouth had moved. He decided it was possible.

Callen smiled at the older woman. She had evidently taken a liking to him. She had developed a rather predatory look in her otherwise innocent eyes as she started describing her great niece, who was apparently a good Christian woman. The niece didn't hold with that 'education stuff', and was making a living cutting hair in a salon over in the next county.

"Cutting hair, that's a good job for a woman. She can always find a job, in case, God forbid, something happens to her husband, but she's not putting a man out of work. Unless it's one of those men . . . well you know what kind of man goes into hairdressing, now don't you?"

Callen was once again almost speechless, but managed to nod and the woman continued to describe her great niece, going on and on about her modesty, innocence, and cooking abilities. He almost felt like saying if he wanted someone totally dependent on him he'd just get a mail order bride from Russia, but didn't think that would add much to the conversation. Seemingly keeping his complete concentration on his conversational companion, he edged a little bit closer to the wall, pretending it was in order to let a small group of children edge past. Finally he was able to excuse himself by taking his and the lady's dishes over to the teens stuck with dishwashing duty.

He had to admit that they didn't seem to be overly downtrodden by this duty. Indeed they seemed to be having a great time; judging by the amount of giggling that was going on. He supposed that since these girls didn't go to public school, but were instead homeschooled and were mostly stuck helping their mothers take care of large families of younger brothers and sisters, doing dishes after the weekly barbeque following a church service might actually seem like an exciting social event. He smiled to himself as he noticed the girls slyly checking out the group of teen boys who had been put to more the more manly work of folding and putting away all the chairs that had been used for the service. They were, in turn, checking out the group of girls washing dishes. Callen found himself feeling very sorry for any of the children in this church who happened to be born non-heterosexual. He hoped they got out, and that maybe his team would be able to help.

As he passed near the tables holding the dessert, after dropping the dishes off with the girls, he realized that if he were to suddenly develop a craving for something sweet, he might be able to get close enough to the Reverend and his coterie to overhear something. Selecting a clean dessert plate and a fork, he began to browse the truly impressive collection of treats that still filled the table. One of the teenage girls zipped past the table like a young June Nelson out of the fifties, and asked if he wanted the last slice of buttermilk pie so she could take the pie plate to be washed.

Callen decided that that was a perfectly reasonable reason for eating a slice of buttermilk pie, hoping that he would actually like it once he had it. Humming distractedly to himself, he circled the table, looking for the perfect complement to his buttermilk pie, which is to say, something that he was positive he would like. Chocolate cake was always a good choice, but there was also cherry pie, and apple pie, and a truly stunning coconut cake. The coconut cake was conveniently located about halfway down the table, and on the other side from the group he was trying to get closer to. He would still be able to hear, but with the table between him and the group, it would look less like he was trying to eavesdrop.

He knew he would only have a quick minute or two to grab the cake and get out before he started looking suspicious. Moving at a slow deliberate pace, he sidled around the table and reached for the serving utensil that went with the coconut cake. Putting his plate on the table next to the cake, he carefully cut himself a smallish piece of cake, trying to look like a man who wanted a large piece but didn't want to appear greedy. As he levered the piece of cake on his plate, trying to keep the look on his face one of total concentration on his dessert, he overheard one of the men, could it be 'Fringe Guy', mention a place.

" . . . corner of Allen and Sycamore, centrally located."

Callen moved away, even as Fringe Guy was still talking, and found a spot next to the far wall to eat his dessert. He found that he did like buttermilk pie, and made a mental note to have a larger slice the next time the opportunity presented itself.

Later that night, Callen made a point of driving past the corner of Allen and Sycamore streets, an intersection which was just down the street from the store he managed. It gave him a good excuse to stop by, and he did want to see if there had been any problems that evening. Thankfully, there had not been any, and as he drove by the corner in question, he looked quickly, checking for any reason that the Reverend and his group of elders may have been interested in the area.

There were four lots that could have been described as being at the corner of Allen and Sycamore; and these four lots contained the following: to the northeast there was an empty lot. To the northwest there was a gas station. To the southwest there was a 24 hour donut and coffee shop, still doing a booming business at not quite midnight. And to the southeast, there was an armed forces recruiting station with its colorful posters extolling the benefits of joining any branch of the armed forces. Callen noticed that the recruiters had not had the bright idea of putting up a poster that just said, "We'll get you out of this town"; thereby addressing the reason that most of the people in this area might have an interest in joining up. He was pretty sure all their possible recruits realized that anyway.

Driving away, Callen was in a sober and thoughtful mood. The people who made up the more radical elements of his new church were big talkers about patriotism and the value of serving one's country. However they were also convinced that some the military's more recent decisions called into question the purity of the military itself. Even though everyone in the church who had served in the military had done so since the fifties, when the armed forces were officially desegregated, many of them had trouble keeping their distaste for the idea of minorities being allowed to command "real Americans" hidden. The recent decision to allow women in combat arms units was also detested, and while "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" had been very unpopular, apparently the fact that it was gone was even less popular. Callen was beginning to believe that he had found one of the locations that they might be considering as a target.

Earlier at the library, Deeks watched in a mixture of interest and amusement as his supervisor, Catherine, attempted to help a patron on the reference desk. There was much waving of hands on the part of the patron, and he could detect a hint of frustration in his supervisor. Finally, she handed her patron a slip of paper, and wrote several things on another slip for her. The patron did not seem at all happy with the information she was given, but instead swept out of the library with an attitude that could be seen for blocks around.

"What was up with that?" he questioned as Catherine came back behind the circulation desk, heading for the work room where she stashed her coffee cup while she was on public service. They weren't allowed to have coffee at the desks, both because of the risk of damaging books or computer equipment if it fell over, and because they didn't allow the patrons to have coffee in the library. The library director said it would hypocritical of them to sit around drinking coffee while telling the patrons to take it outside. Marty supposed that was fair, but he'd been a cop too long to be separated from his coffee for long. He'd found that some librarians were even more caffeinated than he was.

"Well," Catherine answered, taking a long drink of her coffee. "She was upset that we didn't have the textbook for her college class available."

"Why would we have her textbook?" he asked reasonably. "We're a public library, not the university library."

"Because she needed it, and didn't want to buy it herself," she replied.

"My college libraries often had books for my classes on reserve. That way I could look at them before the cheap ones I bought showed up in the mail! Did we see if the university has it? As a student she should be able to use that library."

"She's not going to our local university," Catherine said. "She's taking distance education classes from a University in Tennessee. Their library had an impressive array of ebooks and really great databases."

"So why did she leave in such a bad mood?"

"She doesn't want to use any electronic resources. She only wants to use hard copy."

Marty was momentarily at a loss for words. "So she only wanted to use paper resources for an online class. Okay. That makes perfect sense."


	3. Chapter 3

Disclaimer: I do not own any part of NCIS LA, or any of the characters.

Many, many thanks to everyone who has read this and given me feedback!

Chapter 3 -

Meanwhile, Callen had finally finished up the time sheets for the entire grocery store. He reminded himself that his employees really wanted to get paid, but just had some trouble filling out the paperwork that would allow them to get paid. He needed to research a more effective method, he decided.

Just as the final time sheet was signed, one of the senior clerks appeared at his office door. He had instituted an open door policy, letting his subordinates know that they could come and get him at any time, or even call if he wasn't there. Most of his employees were slowly getting used to the new policy. The senior staff was very competent, but the woman who approached him now was a bit flustered.

"I'm so sorry to bother you," she exclaimed. "But that gentleman who always asks you about the meat is wanting to talk to you personally. Again."

Callen made a show of sighing. Sam, in his cover identity, had made a splash in the grocery store the week before the semester started. He had come to the store several times to make sure that the store could provide the halal meat he needed. This was a new and unusual request for this store, and Callen had had to reassure his staff that nothing that made meat halal would also make it unfit for their consumption.

Callen smiled at his worker, and said, "That's okay, I'll be glad to talk to him again. Just send him on back."

The worker left with a smile and ushered Sam back into Callen's office.

"Welcome again, sir," he exclaimed loud enough that his worker could hear him. "What came I help you with today?"

"Well," Sam said, as the door swung shut behind him, "Today I was wondering if the vegetables in the produce section are . . ."

Callen was laughing, "Halal? I don't think there is such a thing?"

Sam tried to look innocent, "Not unless you commonly mix them with pork products! I was going to say organic!"

Callen nodded knowingly, "You're really missing the banter, aren't' you?" Sam didn't argue with this statement.

The partners chatted for a good fifteen minutes, enjoying the time spent together while Callen passed on the information he had gathered in recent days. Sam countered with information about his students. They had been cleared during the team's early investigations, so there was not much to report.

Fifteen minutes was about all the time they could safely allow for conversation before any of the store workers might start wondering what was going on. Callen made sure to walk Sam to the door of the store. While they walked he assured him, with a harried expression, that of course the meat has halal, the vegetables were organic, and the spices were recently imported.

After Sam departed, Callen decided to take one more walk through his store before leaving for the day. He wanted to make sure that everything was going well. He hoped he wouldn't be leaving for the night only to return to utter chaos in the morning. While he thought he had everyone trained to call him if there was a problem, never hurt to check.

For once everything thing seemed to going smoothly. None of his cashiers had called in, not even the ones who freaked out at tests, and always had homework to keep them busy. His cashiers were mostly a mixture of university and high school students, and finals week at either school could get pretty hairy. Or so his predecessor had warned him.

He headed to the parking lot, juggling his keys, his apron, and his coffee cup from the morning. He was sure that he looked preoccupied. His finally tuned situational awareness still enabled him to monitor the parking lot, noticing a small group of young teens gathered suspiciously in a huddle near the door. He had noticed a sudden uptick in disappearing merchandize, and the older employees had sworn it was caused by the teens. He was close to putting the condoms under lock and key, although he doubted that the middle school kids were actually having enough sex to justify the amount that were disappearing off his shelves.

Making a mental note to call and warn his employees, he almost missed the small knot of men near his truck. He recognized all of them. They were his soon to be hunting buddies for the weekend, the elders of the church. He approached them affably.

"What's up guys?" He greeted them.

"Well," the man he'd been calling 'Fringe Guy' began, "We were just watching those young imps of Satan over there. It's just a sign of the times, you know."

He was a man in his sixties, who had served a short stint in the military and spent the rest of his life working in blue-collar jobs and devoting his life to the church.

Callen said, "Well, I'm sure we all got into a little bit of trouble when we were that age." He didn't think that this particular group would show a great deal of empathy, but he thought it might be worth a try.

"I certainly didn't!" 'Fringe Guy' exclaimed, offended. "In my day we went to good god-fearing schools, and when we came home our mothers were there. Nobody messed with my mother," he continued with a small reminiscent smile on his face. He continued, "We didn't have no internet showing us what trouble to get into, and none of these outsiders telling us there was no such thing as sin, that we could do whatever we wanted! There were consequences, by god, consequences back in my day. If I'd roamed around causing trouble and stealing things my daddy would have blistered my butt, which is something parents can't do these days!"

"Ain't that the truth," 'Bald Spot' spoke up. "Back in my day we had respect for our elders."

Callen cast his mind back to his legend. Eric and Nell tended to stick pretty close to the truth, so he was an orphan, but he thought he'd grown up in Los Angeles, not in Mayberry.

'Bald Spot' smiled at him, shook his hand and said gruffly that he was looking forward to seeing him at the hunting trip next Friday. Callen nodded and showed great enthusiasm for the hunting trip himself.

The group of balding elders bade farewell to Callen, and moved off. They were now discussing how much of something would fit in their trucks. He noticed that they had four, one per person.

'Bald Spot' was saying, as he turned away, "It's not just the amount of space that matters; you've also got to think about the weight . . ."

'Fringe Guy' replied, "I know, but with four trucks we ought to be able to handle all of the bags we need. Do you think it would be better to get the fifty pound bags, or go for the hundred pound bags?

'Bald Spot' replied, "Let's wait until we get to the garden store to figure that out. Either one of those sizes or even a mixture of both would serve our purposes."

As they were leaving, Callen overheard one of them say, "Make sure to go down Willow Road, I want to check out the situation, see what the traffic is like there this time of day."

Callen drove himself home, carefully avoiding the area of Willow Road. He wanted to check his map and see if he could figure out the reason for the sudden interest in Willow Road.

Meanwhile at the library, Kensi stopped in after her classes and office hours were over for the day. She liked to drop in every couple of days to check on her husband. She was used to working with him all day long, and then spending the rest of the day and night alone with him. She missed him when they were not together.

Her official reason for being there was that being present in the library allowed her to draw her own perspective on what was going on in the local community. Additionally it established her as a known member of the community, building relationships with people that could result in an increased ability to gather information.

Actually she just wanted to be with her partner. She usually managed to only come to the library three days a week, after work. Marty's coworkers thought it was as cute as could be, although they occasionally rolled their eyes over the newlyweds. She couldn't say they were wrong.

When she came in, the first thing she noticed was that Deeks was at the circulation desk. She knew that this was one of his least favorite spots to serve. It was the first place most patrons came, and it was always an adventure to see who showed up. Today seemed to be a good example, as he was currently being shouted at by a man who was certainly old enough to know better.

Kensi sat down to enjoy the show. She noticed that his supervisors, Catherine and Claire, had apparently decided that he was capable of handling himself at the desk, and were not hovering over him. When he had first started he had felt a bit insulted, thinking that they doubted his abilities. Eventually he decided that they just needed to assure themselves that he could handle the job.

The patron was in a state, waving his hands around and yelling. Marty, Kensi was glad to see, was keeping his cool, keeping his voice down, but not backing down. He had told her that he felt that some of the library's regulations were too harsh, but that he had to enforce them. His coworkers would not appreciate if he let things slide and made them look bad.

The patron was in full yell, upset that he was being asked to pay for a book. "But I turned it in!" he insisted.

"Yes, sir, you did," Marty replied, "But the book was water damaged, and we are not going to be able to put it back on the shelf. We're going to have to replace it."

He pulled out the book in question. Whichever member of the library staff had first dealt with it had placed it in a large clear plastic bag. This bag contained the mess, but couldn't hide the fact that it was little more than a sodden mass of warping paper. That person had also helpfully appended a sticky note with the patrons name, library account number, phone number, and email address.

"It was like that when I checked it out." The patron responded. "It looked exactly like that when I took it home. You gave it to me looking like that, and now you want me to pay for it!"

"No, sir. We would not have checked this out to you in this condition. Our staff monitors the condition of items as we check them out. When we find something with minor damage we make a note in the front so the patron does not get charged for damage…"

The patron immediately leapt upon this point. "There was a note in that book!" Marty pried the book out of the bag and peeled the cover open.

"Yes, there is." Marty agreed, "It says 'underlining on page 47'. Also, if the book had in fact been wet three weeks ago when you checked it out, it should have dried since then, but the book is still wet."

Momentarily stymied, the patron quickly regrouped. "That book was in perfect shape when I put it in your book drop. I bet some homeless guy pissed in the book drop, and that's how come my book was damaged!"

Kensi wondered where the man had found any homeless people in the town, since she certainly hadn't seen any. Marty smiled, "We have video surveillance of the book drop, and can easily check that, sir."

"How do I know that somebody who works here didn't damage the book!" the patron riposted. "Just to get more money out of me?" This logic seems to have finally snapped Marty's patience. The look he gave the patron was worthy of Hetty threatening one of her agents with a deadly stiletto that she was pretending was a letter opener. Marty didn't even have to open his mouth again before Kensi saw the patron wilt. His shoulders drooped, and he pulled out his wallet.

"Fine, I dropped it in the bathtub while I was reading. How much is it going to be?"


	4. Chapter 4

Disclaimer – I own nothing related to NCIS-Los Angeles.

Thank you everyone for the reviews! Ona, I hope you enjoy the library stories!

Chapter 4 -

Sam sighed as he read the essays resulting from his Comparative Religions assignment. Overwhelmed by the sheer amount of grading he had had to deal with today, he decided to head over to the student union and find a snack. His office hours were over, and he had finished his last lecture of the day half an hour previously. He would just get a small snack, he decided, not a Kensi snack.

As he entered the cafeteria, heading almost automatically for the smoothie bar, he noticed a group of his former students gathered at a table. Even though Sam had started out with full classes, probably because he was the one new professor in the department, quite a few of his students had dropped his class, or transferred to different professors soon after the semester started. Some had come to him with legitimate needs to move their classes, such as sudden problems with child care, or unexpected schedule conflicts. However, some had just gone straight to the student services, mostly after the first class when he'd let it be known that he was Muslim. He'd lost so many students that first week that he'd actually been called into his department head's office to discuss the matter. If he had been a man who was seriously committed to a career as a college professor he would have been worried by the whole situation. However, the department head had merely told him what had happened and reiterated the department had deliberately chosen him to provide a different view point for their students. He had ended the meeting by urging Sam to stay strong and not worry about the situation.

The group of students fell silent as Sam walked past, and he could feel their eyes on his back as he stood in line, trying to decide which of the smoothies he wanted. He finally settled on a "green" smoothie with wheat grass. As he turned to head back to his office he noticed Kensi heading for the bakery and nodded to her. As far as anyone on the campus knew, the new Comparative Religion professor and the new Forensic Science instructor had nothing in common besides starting to work at the university at the same time. They had only met in orientation sessions and some Faculty Senate meetings. They had decided to not attempt to establish a friendship, deciding that remaining separate would allow them to move in vastly different emotional regions of the university. He confined himself to nodding vaguely in her direction, and continued on his way. She returned the nod with the abstracted expression on her face that either meant that she was mentally composing her next test, or that she was trying to decide between two or three different types of donuts. Really, he thought it was a fifty-fifty chance either way.

As he left the cafeteria, he automatically held the door open for an older gentleman who was entering, a scraggly looking older white guy with a bald spot. Far from being appreciative, the man gave him a dirty look, like Sam had possibly allowed his dog to defile the gentleman's lawn, or he'd taken the last pound of coffee during a pre-storm frenzy at the grocery store. It surprised Sam a little, and he slowed to a halt while he tried to remember if he'd ever met this man, and if he so what he'd done to piss him off. Nothing came to mind. Just before he left the room, he turned to see that the angry looking older gentlemen had found his way to the table with Sam's disgruntled former students, and now all of them were eyeing him suspiciously.

Just outside the building he ran into Akem, one of his young Muslim students. Akem was a slender young man who was studying mathematics. Sam knew that Akem was in his twenties, but he seemed much younger, reminding Sam of his own son. They had met at the makeshift mosque they both attended each Friday. Just now Akem looked puzzled, and maybe a little scared.

"What's up, Akem?" he questioned.

"That man, the one who just went into the building, he was talking to me." Akem answered with a bemused look on his face.

"Well, sometimes people just like to be friendly," Sam said.

"He didn't seem friendly," Akem countered quietly. "He seemed like he was trying to be friendly, but he couldn't hide the fact that he thought I was some sort of disgusting creature he couldn't believe he was talking to."

"What was he saying to you?"

"He was asking my all sorts of questions. My name, where I was from, where I was living, what my major is."

"That's quite the list of questions, is he writing an article about you?" Sam joked.

"I don't know," Akem answered, "But I'm not the only one he's talked to. Ask at the next service, he's talked to many of us. He also comes to campus to talk to those students who seem to hate us."

Akem continued on his way, heading, by the look of it, towards Seward Hall, where the math and engineering classes were held. He had a stack of textbooks, and as Sam watched he broke into a run; probably running late for class.

He had given Sam plenty to think about.

As Kensi left the bakery, clutching her donut and a cup of coffee she passed a person coming from the direction in which she had seen Sam disappear. He struck her as too old to be a traditional student, as most of the students at the college were, but she didn't recognize him as a member of the faculty. He joined a group of students gathered around a table who were carrying out an intense but hushed conversation. As she passed she heard him say, "Thank you, guys, for your suggestions! I think, with your help, I've found exactly what I'm looking for!"

Meanwhile at the library, Marty was working on the Reference Desk. This was generally a busy time, which he quite liked because it flew by. Technically, reference duties included answering questions posed by patrons, but generally there were not many questions asked while he was on the reference desk. On the other hand, another part of the duty was monitoring the public use computers, and that could get really busy.

The computers that the library provided for free public use were old, and had been through a couple of other city departments before they came to the library. The age of the computers, combined with restrictions the city's IT department put on downloading meant that not only were the computers slow, but there were some web sites that patrons could just not get to. He sympathized with both the patrons and the IT department. Thus he did not find it all unusual when a woman at computer number 10 waved frantically for assistance.

"How can I help you?" he asked the lady brightly, keeping a professional smile on his face.

"This computer is too slow," the lady began, pointing at the screen. Marty squinted to see what she was pointing at.

"Well, I know that they are older computers, so sometimes we have to baby them a little bit," he began, frantically counting." For example, I'm not sure that our computers can handle having 12 tabs open at once. Maybe you could close a couple of them?"

"No, I need all of these open!" the lady exclaimed. "I'm trying to get something done! I need all of these open! Can't you make it faster?"

"Well, not really," Marty began. "This is a really old computer. We might try saving and closing everything, and then restarting the computer, but I have to warn you that that can take a long time, up to three or four minutes for the computer to totally reboot. The good news is that it doesn't mess with your reservation time, and if there's not a waiting list, I can give you a little more time to help make up for it."

"Oh, this is terrible," the woman said, almost sobbing.

"I'm so sorry ma'am," Marty replied, starting to get a bit worried, "Do you want me to restart the computer. That's really the only thing that's going to help. . . "

The woman cut him off in mid-sentence, but not in a rude way, but in more of a resigned manner. "No, that's okay, I'm going to have to go somewhere else, this computer is too slow, and it's messing with my psychosis."

Marty nodded, "Well, Ma'am, that certainly is not our intention, good luck wherever you go next."

The lady breathed a quiet "Thank you," gathered her possessions and left, leaving Marty slightly confused, but glad that he was not causing any more mental health issues. He wished that she had stayed long enough for him offer her a pamphlet on the county run mental health services available. She had been moving pretty fast and had gotten out of the library before he remembered he had them available.

In contrast the next patron he dealt with left a smile on his face that stayed there the rest of the day and even into the evening while he was telling Kensi about his day.

At first view she looked like the stereotypical 'little old lady'. She was probably in her eighties, with silvery hair and a permanent smile. She was looking for resources to learn Calculus, she told him, because she had recently gone back to school to become a private investigator. She was having a hard time with her Calculus class and was hoping the library maintained a list of tutors. They didn't, but Marty was charmed by her thirst for knowledge. He did have to ask why a private investigator needed to learn Calculus, and she admitted that she wasn't quite sure why, because she thought it was a bit useless herself. Her school was trying to tell her it was necessary for her to be able to interpret forensic evidence. She thought that it would be much better to send all such material to a lab. "Much better to let the experts deal with it!" she exclaimed.

At the supermarket, Callen was counting down the final hours of his shift, getting ready to head to the Single Men's Bible Study scheduled for the evening. He was prepared this time, he had read the assigned chapter, and picked an assortment of cookies to share with his classmates.

Before he left for his class, he checked in with the assistant managers on duty. He listened to their concerns, trying to see if there was something on the horizon that he might need to pay more attention to. For the most part that was all they wanted, someone to listen. They were all capable of handling any problems that arose, but several of them had so concerns that they wanted to bring to his attention.

The produce manager was worried about the quality of the latest shipment of vegetables, so she and Callen checked over a random selection. One vegetable was much like the next to Callen, but he bowed to her superior knowledge, and agreed that they didn't look quite as nice as they previous batch. They finally decided that while there did seem to be a slight decline in quality, it was probably because of the time of year, and so it wouldn't be worth their time to complain to the corporate produce buyers.

Most of the managers made of point of warning him that the rains were coming. They we worried that he didn't realize how serious the problems could be. They warned him that the store was likely to get hit hard both by people preparing for trouble, and also by those who panicked at the last minute when the rains caught them by surprise. Also, as the rains hit the roads might be washed out, delaying the trucks that brought more supplies just at the time that those supplies were needed the most. His predecessor had also made a point of warning of this exact scenario; He was beginning to be a bit paranoid about the whole matter.

He managed to put his imminent doom out of his head long enough to get to the church for his bible study. The bible study provoked an intense discussion about the 12th chapter of Romans and how it applied to the modern American sports culture. It certainly gave Callen a lot to think about.

After the end of the discussion at the church, 'No Hair" and "Bald Spot" were engaged in a serious seeming conversation as Callen approached them. As usual with the members of the group of Elders, they seemed to stop talking as he approached.

"I'm sorry for the intrusion, guys," he began, "But I'm wondering what I need to do get ready for the hunting trip. I've done the hunter education online, and was wondering if we need any tags?"

'No Hair' rolled his eyes. "The government is getting involved in way too many things in our life." he said. "But I guess I can understand you wanting to follow the government's law in addition to God's law!"

'Bald Spot' was a bit more forthcoming. "We're just going to be hunting for jackrabbits, on private land owned by one of our brothers. It's not likely we'll see a game warden, but even if we do, there are no special limits on jackrabbits!"

The two elders let him know where to meet, and he left them alone to continue their mysterious communications. They were all going to be meeting the following evening, and sharing a truck to the hunting destination.


	5. Chapter 5

Disclaimer – I own nothing related to NCIS-Los Angeles.

Chapter 5 -

Another day at the public library. Deeks was opening today. On the whole, he preferred opening to closing. It sucked just a bit to be up so early, but this far from the coast, it wasn't like he could surf anyway. The hardest part was dragging himself out of the bed he shared with Kensi. Even if she was still asleep and snoring, she made any bed perfect.

He made sure the newspapers were put out. He ensured that the public computers were logged on, that the catalog computers were turned on and ready to go, that the blinds were open, and that the key to the cashbox was where it was supposed to be. He even checked his email before the rush of the day started. He checked the schedule to see who his circulation clerk was going to be, and groaned internally when he saw it was Calista, one of the young girls who showed up exactly at 9. It was hard to blame her, she was a college student working part time for minimum wage, but if she was even five minutes late he was stuck working both desks and dealing with the unruly queue of people he already could see forming outside the doors leading into the library.

After the initial burst of activity at the desk had been taken care of, he made small talk with Calista, discussing their weekends, and listening to her talk about the party she had gone to on Friday, and the big test she had that evening, and then headed back to the reference desk. From the sounds of happy shrieking coming from the children's room Story Time was going well. The public computers were already getting full, but there wasn't yet a waiting list.

The rest of the day passed rather uneventfully. There seemed to be quite a few people coming into the library for the express purpose of checking out large stacks of books and the library's limit of DVDs. After the first three or four repetitions of this pattern Deeks had to comment to the fifth lady to do this.

"Planning a quiet weekend at home?"

"Of course," she replied instantly, "It's almost time for the rains to start!"

"The rains?" Deeks questioned.

"You haven't been here long, have you?" she answered. "You'll see. When the rains start the cliffs along the roads leading out of town get wet. Then we get landslides, and the roads can be closed for a couple of days at a time. It's a pain to get out, so I like to have plenty to do at home, just to avoid the traffic and activity. I'm on my way to the grocery store next, so I really won't have to go out for a few days."

"That makes a lot of sense, he agreed.

"Didn't you know that before you came here?" she questioned. "I would have thought that a librarian would do his research!"

"Well, I'm not a real librarian," Marty answered. "This is the first library I've worked in. My wife got a job up at the college, and I just wanted to be with her."

The woman smiled, "Well, I followed my husband around the world while he was in the army, so I know how that goes. We ended up in some interesting places! Have a good day!"

She left with her pile of books and DVDs.

The day dragged, as far as Deeks was concerned, once he got off the desk. Working circulation and to a lesser extent reference, was chaotic and occasionally frustrating, but time seemed to fly by when he was stationed on one of those desks. Once he was relieved on the desk the majority of his time was scheduled to be spent shelving books and shelf reading.

Shelving was unexpectedly frustrating. While he liked things to be in order, the whole process was not as soothing as he'd hoped. Shelving was unrelenting. Every day what seemed like a cubic ton of books were returned to the library, and that wasn't even counting the new books and DVDs that came in.

But when all the books were back in their proper locations, the duty that remained was shelf reading. Shelf reading sounded quite interesting, in theory. If you didn't know what it was, it sounded like you could go to the shelves, and find something to read. Anyway, shelf reading actually consisted of checking each book on any given shelf to ensure that they were in the right order. This could get very boring very quickly.

There was a persistent feeling, Deeks had found, that librarians got to sit around and read all day. Deeks had found that not only didn't he have the time to read at work, he saw all the books he wanted to read at work, so he was completely overwhelmed by reading choices by the time he got home. He smiled to himself, he always said he wanted to read at home, but once he was home, he found he just wanted to focus on Kensi. They were definitely enjoying the cover they were assigned to carry out!

Fortunately, there had been a lot of books returned that morning, and he was able to spend almost the rest of his day shelving. The part time employees did a lot of the shelving, and they did it fast too, to the extent where Marty often called them 'shelving ninjas'. They almost seemed to have magical powers. Today, however, one of the ninjas had called in sick and another had a scheduled day off to get ready for a high school sports event. So the library was a bit short handed, and everyone was working on a desk or shelving. Marty was glad that he was able to spend time shelving; it was actually more relaxing than the alternative.

Another often unappreciated advantage to shelving was the fact that it gave whoever was shelving an opportunity to keep an eye on the library that they might not have the time or viewpoint to otherwise see. That was how Cecilia, the full time paraprofessional who practically ran the library, had managed to find a couple of teens making out in the children's section, although a couple of parents of toddlers had not been far behind her.

Marty managed to finish the shelving that was necessary in the children's room, and headed back to the circulation desk to get his next load. He tried not to even look at the cart where the children's books were placed after they were checked in. however, that didn't stop him from seeing that it was already halfway full again. He sighed, and moved on to the overflowing cart of adult books. The young adult books were overflowing too. He was better off not even thinking about the DVDs.

He decided to bite the bullet and start with the nonfiction. After that he moved on to the adult fiction. Working the in adult fiction section, especially in the early part of the alphabet brought him close to the periodical section. This was not a large area, but had some magazines, as well as a few comfy chairs where people could sit and read. It was usually used as a quiet reading place, but today he noticed that it had been taken over by a small group huddled around one of the tables, engaged in an intense discussion. They were a group of older white men, Deeks noticed, not that that was an unusual group in this town.

Still, he had to give these guys some credit they were keeping their voices down, and not bothering any of the other patrons. Aside from some wild arm waving he could hardly tell they were there. They seemed really focused on some papers they had scattered around the table.

Marty moved back to the circulation desk area to get his next load of books. As he headed into the stacks to shelf a stack of books by Sandra Brown, he noticed, however, that the group of people also had a plate of cookies that they were were sharing. He signed inwardly this was one of the rules that he really hated enforcing. He put the stack of Sandra Brown books back on his shelving cart, and approached them.

"Pardon me guys," he began, "But we don't allow food in the library, so I'm going to have to ask you to put those cookies away, or take them outside."

The men turned to look at him scornfully. He could almost hear them thinking, "Who the hell is this idiot who thinks he can tell us what to do?

"What did you say?" the older man who seemed to be in charge asked him. He looked familiar to Marty, as if he'd seen him before. Marty put that down to it being a small town, for all he knew he could have run into him at the grocery store Callen was managing.

"I'm sorry, sir," Marty repeated. We've had problems with mice in the past, so we don't allow any food in the library. Mice have been known to gnaw through books, so we don't want them to feel welcome here."

"Well, apparently you don't want people to feel welcome here either," one of the other men, who had no hair whatsoever, snapped.

"I'm sorry, sir, but there are tables out in the lobby where you can eat your cookies." Marty said patiently.

The older man made a show of signing heavily, and putting the cling wrap back over his plate of cookies. "We'll leave; it's obvious this library is infested with liberals, just like any other government controlled workplace these days. Jason, grab those maps!"

The other men started gathering their materials, murmuring "Yes, Reverend" as they did so. Marty was able to see the maps showed the entire city, and had several locations marked in red, and a couple more locations circled. As they were leaving, one of the other men, a typical victim of male pattern baldness, with nothing left but a fringe of short white hair around his head, murmured to the others, "We'll get even with them, when the day comes. Their stupid bleeding heart liberal ways will not protect them from the vengeance of the Lord."

Marty spent just a little bit of time wondering how exactly asking people not to eat in a library made him a tool of the leftist bleeding heart liberal faction. He just didn't want to have the library's collection of books destroyed by mice, or to be more frank, roaches. They tried not to mention the possibility of a roach problem to the patrons, because so many of the patrons tended to freak out at the very word. He couldn't blame them; he did not care for the little bugs himself. He smiled as he remembered his partner, and wife, saving him from a bug back at their home base in California. Here at the library, however, he had had to save himself on several occasions, when books that been returned had ended up having roaches climb out of them. He had almost freaked out the first time that happened but now he was used to it.

Trying to remember what areas had been circled on the map, he headed back to the back room, mentioning to the Calista that he needed to grab a sip of his coffee. In the back room there was a map of the city located on the wall above the table, with the various zones marked.

For some reason, they kept track of what zone of the city each person they gave a card to live in. Marty had been assured that they could run a report, and determine how many books were checked out by the residents of each zone, and then use the demographic information from the most recent census to target their advertising to each zone. They could also find out which zones used the library the least and increase their advertising to the inhabitants of that zone, trying to get more usage. However, as his boss had said, while that sounded good in theory, in reality, nobody had the time. As she put it, "We don't even have the time to track overdues, how are we going to find the time to pull together all this research data and start targeted advertising campaigns?"

While he was standing there, inhaling his coffee like he was going to die without it, and studying the map on the wall, Catherine came up to him.

"What's going on?" she asked, "Rough day?"

"Not too bad," Marty answered, "Just a lot of shelving since the kids are out today. I had to run out a group for eating cookies in the periodical section."

"That's too bad," Catherine answered, "Did they offer you a cookie? I've had people try to bribe me, but of course it never works." Catherine had been working at the library for what the staff called 'The Great Mouse Invasion', and had no desire to see it repeated.

"No, they didn't even offer me a cookie," Marty complained jokingly. "They just packed up their cookies and their maps and headed out."

"So why are you studying the map?" Catherine asked

"Well, you know I'm not real familiar with the city yet, and they had some locations marked on it. I was just wondering what they had marked. But of course, I can't remember hardly any of them, so I can't really tell."

"It's a shame we don't have access to our security cameras," Catherine mentioned casually. "I worked in a library once where we monitored the security cameras from the reference desk. We have a good view down into the periodical section from one of our cameras, but we have to go through the police department to get access to the data. They want a good reason out of us, sorry Marty, not just idle curiosity."

Marty nodded, "I know, it's just a bit frustrating." He paused, "Why were you monitoring the security cameras at reference? At that other library?"

"Well, we had an attempted sexual assault in our reference section, and when we pulled the recordings, it was obvious that if we'd been watching the security cameras we might have been able to stop it earlier.

"Sexual assault in the reference section? Really?" Marty was appalled.

"Yep, two guys, and one girl on one girl. It was a really horrific event."

"Oh my god."

"Yeah, our head reference librarian freaked out, she just happened to turn the corner onto that row just in time to stop the whole thing. When she interrupted them, one of the guys picked up a reference book to hide his . . . excitement, and she was worried it was one of our brand new encyclopedias. Fortunately, it turned out that it was just a bound volume of the "Southwestern Historical Quarterly". She went over that whole section with sanitizer as soon as she could."

"Wait, he was using a reference book to hide his . . ."

"Yep. Although she said he could have gotten by with a mass-market paperback, he didn't need the reference book."

Marty laughed out loud, "That's hysterical but still a bit disturbing."

"That was not the most disturbing thing that I've seen at libraries, and not even the most disturbing thing that happened as part of that incident."

"You know I've got to hear this. What could be worse than attempted nonconsensual sex in a public library's reference section?"

"Well," Catherine began, peeking around the corner so she could check on how busy the desk was. "The most disturbing thing about that incident was that the woman who was involved in the assault, not the victim, but the one helping the guys, was someone we knew already. We had had problems with her before, so we knew who she was. So did the police, so they knew where to find her, and they went and picked her up at work. She was a bus aide on a special needs bus for the local school district."

"So she went from sexual activity in a public place to helping special needs school kids?"

"Yep," Catherine confirmed.

"Wow." Marty said. He was almost completely nonplussed. "That must have been surprising for the people on staff"

"Not really," Catherine answered. "Remember how I said she was already known to the staff?"

"Do I want to know what for?"

"We caught her giving blow-jobs for money in the parking lot of the library."

"Wow,"

"I know, it was truly disturbing."

"Now what was worse than that?"

"Well, at the same library, one of the staff caught a guy jerking off with some of the manga graphic novels. In the aisle where the graphic novels were shelved. We had to withdraw five of them that were . . . well, we called them damaged. Do I have to go into any more detail?"

"No, I've got it. Yuck"

"I know, it was kinda disgusting." She paused, "Public libraries are weird. My old boss there said she was in a constant state of being 'one pervert away from retirement.' She actually did retire last year. I guess they finally got to her."

Catherine noticed his slightly disturbed expression. "We've got much better patrons here than at the library! Don't worry about it! But remind me sometime about why we had to take all the changing tables out of the men's room at that library, also known as the story of 'Poop Man'." She walked away laughing, and Marty went back to his shelving.

Sam spent a quiet day, dealing with the minutiae of day-to-day life in a university. Somewhere in between teaching a class, consulting with students and attending an impromptu meeting of the entire Comparative Religion faculty Sam found the time and opportunity to track down Akem's roommates, also young Muslim men. He wanted to confirm Akem's story about the older man who was making a point of speaking to young Muslim men on campus.

Duha and Naji immediately recognized the man from Sam's questions. He had spoken to both of them at different times. They repeated the list of questions he had asked them, which were identical to the questions Akem had reported. Neither one of them had any idea why the man was so interested in them, although Duha said he felt a bit like a zoo animal under examination.

After work that night, when Marty finished the short walk to the house he and Kensi were sharing, he immediately contacted Eric and Nell over his secure communications link. They promised to hack into the library's security footage, and send him the results. After that he finished preparing dinner, so that it would be ready when Kensi returned from the late class she was teaching at the university.

In an excess of good timing, just as he was pulling the rolls out of the oven, he heard Kensi's car pull into the garage. This meant he was able to give the beef stew one last stir, and greet her at the door into the garage with a kiss. Maybe even a little more than a kiss, when they were finally able to pull themselves away from each other, both of them were short of breath, and not nearly as hungry as they had been. Well, they were not as hungry for food as they had been, anyway.

"That's a wonderful welcome," Kensi gasped, leaning against him. "I could get used to coming home to that every night."

"I hope you do," Deeks answered, trying to get his own breathing under control. "Come eat dinner and tell me about your day," he said as he headed back to his cooking. He ladled her out a bowl of stew, and put it on the table, piling the rolls in a basket and adding it to the middle of the table. He had already put out the silverware, so he only had to add his own bowl of stew to have his dinner ready to go.

"This looks wonderful, "Kensi complimented him. "How did you get it done so fast? I know you just made it home from work about half an hour ago."

"Well, the stew was in the crock pot all day," he explained, "And the rolls only had to heat up, they were prebaked, bought them at the Callenmart last time I went."

Kensi giggled, as always, over the 'Callenmart' remark, and they went back to their dinner, eating quietly and discussing the events of the day. Kensi had had a mixed bag of students in her class, and he always enjoyed hearing her discuss her interactions with the widely varied students. She was mostly teaching the upper level students, juniors and above, so she didn't have as many of the frustrating freshman stories as Sam did.

Just as they were finishing up their lovely dinner Deeks's phone buzzed. Kensi looked at it, recognizing the special buzz he had set up to announce communications from ops, or from one of their team. She raised one of her perfect eyebrows questioningly.

"I overheard some stuff at work today, needed some help to get more information, "he told her.

Swiping the phone open, he and Kensi gathered around to see Eric and Nell looking back at them. "What's up, guys?" he questioned.

"It's good to see you too," Eric answered.

"It is good to see you," Deeks answered, just to make sure that his friend was not feeling neglected. "Were you able to find that information I was looking for?"

Eric gave him an unbelieving look. "Yes, of course I could find that information! The local police department does not have very good cybersecurity, and neither does your library. After this case is over I may just go in and update everything out of the goodness of my heart!"

Deeks smiled, very few places had cybersecurity that stood up to Eric's high standards. He could see Kensi attempting to hide a smile, probably for the same reasons.

"Anyway," Eric continued. "Here is the relevant portion of the recording. We can't get a good view of the papers they are looking at, but we did get facial rec on the men. Nell contacted Callen, and he identified them all as the ruling junta of the church he's attending. However, after you chased them out for . . . Really, you made them leave because of the cookies?"

"Yes," Deeks answered defensively, "We had a mouse problem; we can't have food in the library!"

"Whatever, man," Eric answered derisively. "You should have seen what we got up to in the library in college. It would blow your mind!"

"It might, but back to the information I asked for?

"Oh yeah, sorry," Eric said before he went back to work. "After you booted them for excessive cookie nibbling in a public library, they moved out to the lobby, temporarily, to get themselves sorted out. The lobby also has security cameras, and after scrolling through a lot of different footage, I was able to get a good picture of the maps they were looking at."

He flashed the maps up on the screen. "I ran this through a map program, and was able to identify almost everything. The marked objects are all the public schools in the town, elementary through the high school. There are five other locations that are circled. One of those is the National Guard armory, one is the Methodist church, and two are at the college. The two at the college are the Student Union and the Social Sciences building where Sam teaches." Next to Marty, Kensi nodded, her eyes following the map.

"And this last circle," Marty asked, pointing to the only one that had not yet been discussed.

"We don't know," Eric answered with an air of dissatisfaction. "It appears to be an empty field. If we wait a bit, we can get some satellite coverage on it, see what shows up."

"Thanks, Eric," Deeks said, "I'd appreciate it. And thanks for finding the security camera footage."

"Not a problem, Deeks," Eric replied, "And by the way, it looks like you have teens using the children's room for a make out spot. You might want to keep an eye on the bathroom in there."

"The family bathroom in the children's room, seriously?"

Nell interrupted, "Otherwise known as a room with a lock in a quiet corner of the library? Absolutely."

Eric and Nell signed off, and Kensi and Deeks were able to do the dishes and then continue their greeting from earlier in the evening.

As Kensi and Deeks were having their romantic dinner and communicating with the team, Callen was meeting his hunting party at the church. They all crowded themselves into 'Bald Spot's' van, and headed out. It was a surprisingly fun group, with lots of banter and inside jokes. Apparently, one of their members had gotten in trouble in the public library. 'Bald Spot' laughed hysterically as he recounted how they had gotten thrown out for eating cookies.

The Reverend finally had to quiet them down when they got to their hunting location. It appeared to be just a deserted field on the outskirts of town. This immediately led to some dissent.

"Why are we here?" one of the men asked. "Wouldn't we have a better chance of finding some bunnies if we're further out of town?"

While the majority of the men involved in the hunting party agreed with him, the Reverend was determined that the hunt was going to happen in this field. Callen began to get the idea that the older man had a different agenda than the rest of the group.

The men gathered into rough line, with the more experienced hunters explaining how to form a line and cover ground, hoping to flush some jackrabbits. There were a couple of other new hunters, and Callen began to try to connect with some of them.

"So," Callen asked the man next to him in line, as they prepared to head out into the field, "Are these jackrabbits good eating, once we get them?"

The man laughed, "No, they're gamy and known for carrying diseases, we're just hunting them for the fun of hunting."

He was immediately corrected by the Reverend. "I will not put up for that attitude! God created the animals to nourish us, and it would be a sin not to use the gifts that God gave us."

Suitably abashed, the men reformed their line and headed into the field. Callen noticed that the Reverend held back, but he wasn't sure if that was to supervise the training or for some other reason.


	6. Chapter 6

Disclaimer – I own nothing related to NCIS-Los Angeles.

Thank you so much to everyone who's read this!

Chapter 6 -

The next day started with a boom, literally. It began as an ordinary enough day. Kensi and Mary shared a quick breakfast before they headed off to work. Callen got to work early so that he could check on the night shift. Sam made it into work just on the nick of time for his class because the rains had finally started, and traffic was running a bit slow.

He made into his classroom with only a minute to spare and apologized to the students who had already beat him to the class. After arranging his books on the table and setting his coffee down on the table he had just opened his mouth to begin his lecture when there was a loud boom in the distance. He paused, recognizing the sound of an explosive device being detonated somewhere nearly. His students looked uneasily at each other, and a couple of late coming students skittered in the door with their eyes as big as saucers, looking spooked.

"What was that, Dr. Hanna?" one of them asked.

"Well, it sounded like an explosion, but it didn't sound nearby, so let's just continue the lecture shall we?"

As he turned to the computer to pull up his lecture slides, he sneakily set his phone to the side where he could see it. If there were any alerts through the news media, or though anything his team had discovered, he had faith that Eric or Nell would get them to him.

As he worked through his lecture slides, dealing with a comparison of the creation stories of various religions around the world he kept a cautious eye on the phone. Surely an update of some sort about what was going on would appear soon.

Across campus, Kensi had also heard the blast. She was not actually teaching, but grading essays in her office. Therefore , she was able to set aside the ungraded essays, walk down the hall and see if any of her co-workers knew what was going on.

None of them did, but they speculated over coffee for a few minutes. Kensi went back to her office, intending to monitor news sites and possibly to call Deeks to see he had heard anything. It would be a completely reasonable thing for a wife to do, she thought. When she waked back into the office her phone was ringing. It startled her to discover that her caller was the local police chief.

"How can I help you?" she asked. She had met the man briefly when she was being introduced to the leaders of the local community at new faculty orientation. They had also spoken in more detail at a mandatory party that was given by the university president somewhat later. They had had a long discussion about new forensics techniques and she had a great respect for the man, who seemed to genuinely care for his community.

"Well, I know it's an imposition," the man began, "But I'm sure that you heard that big boom a little while back.

"Yes, I certainly did," she answered "What was it?"

"Well, it was an explosion, and we think it was a deliberate attack, not an accident. " He began.

"Where was it," she asked. "Was it as close to the campus as it sounded, or did the hills just funnel the sound up to us?"

"Maybe a little bit of both," the police chief said. "It was at the Methodist church."

Kensi gasped, not having to fake the shock she felt. "That's where my husband and I go to church! Is everyone okay? Were there any casualties?"

The police officer was reassuring, "It was a quiet day at the church apparently. The only person in the church was the pastor, and he was at the other side of the building when the blast went off. He had a hell of a shock, as well as a few cuts from flying glass, but he'll be fine."

There was a rumble of thunder, and Kensi looked out the window to see that the rain had increased again. It was pouring out there.

The police chief was still talking to her. "I was hoping, with your experience in crime scene investigation, that you might come down and help us out by looking the place over. I can arrange to let you have some sort of semiofficial status, since it's not something we are really familiar with, and we could use the help."

"Of course," Kensi quickly agreed. "Just let me talk with my department head, and I'll get right down there. Half an hour okay?"

"That'd be great," the police chief quickly agreed.

After quickly hanging up, Kensi called her boss, rapidly explaining the situation. Her boss had heard the explosion, much like everyone in the community, and quickly agreed to let her go assist the police department in their investigation. He promised to take over the classes Kensi was supposed to teach that day, giving a specialty lecture about his own experiences using forensics to solve crimes. Kensi thought her students would enjoy the information. She also asked her department head to remind the students about the quiz they were having next week. He appreciated her attention to detail.

Quickly grabbing a jacket to shield her from the heavy rain that was still coming down, she logged off her computer, locked her office and practically ran through the building to get to her car. If she hadn't been concentrating on her driving she would have called Deeks to see how he was going, but instead she spared a few moments to think of her current husband and always partner. She hoped the library patrons were behaving themselves, and that there weren't any more explosions in town.

When she got there, it was the usual mess of cars parked everywhere, lights flashing through the rain. People in uniform milled around, looking slightly confused. Thankfully there were no ambulances, she guessed that the pastor had already been whisked away from the church, and was hopefully getting checked out at the hospital.

She found a space to park at a closed tanning salon, which ironically enough was where she and Marty usually parked on Sunday morning. They never seemed to get moving fast enough to get to church early. She couldn't say that they had trouble waking up on Sunday mornings, it was the activities after they were already awake but not out of bed that usually caused the lateness. She guessed that might be considered disrespectful, being late to church because she was having amazing sex with her boyfriend, whom everyone in the community thought was her husband. She couldn't bring herself to be too concerned. She'd done worse things while she was undercover, and probably would again.

Grabbing a hat that Marty had left in the car to keep the rain off her face, she crossed the street heading towards the church. It took her a bit to locate the police chief. Waving to catch his attention, she crossed the open ground to where he stood, surrounded by his officers. The town did not have a large police force, so she was willing to bet that the rest of the city had only skeleton coverage. It was possible that many officers who were technically off duty had come in be a part of what promised to be the biggest investigation in the history of the city. She hoped that they would never have anything bigger.

The chief waved her over and introduced her to his officers. She was, she was amused to notice, introduced as a teacher up at the school, who had a long history of working in the fields of forensics. The officers seemed friendly and respectful. She had initially been worried that they might have issues with accepting a woman in a position of responsibility, but there were already a few women on the force.

"Let me show you around," the chief said to Kensi, before giving her a tour of the crime scene. Kensi was quickly able to see that it did not meet the criteria she was looking for to confirm a Middle Eastern origin for the bomb.

"Chief, it just doesn't look as sophisticated as the bombs I've seen Al Qaeda, or ISIS use," Kensi stated. "If anything, it reminds me of the Oklahoma City Bomb, much more reminiscent of domestic terrorism than it is of Middle Eastern terrorists."

"But what about this writing?" the chief asked. He was referring to some Arabic style writing that had been daubed on the wall of the church. The writer had carefully picked a spot that was not overlooked by any of the church's few security cameras, or, from what Kensi could see, any security cameras whatsoever. She missed working in Los Angeles, but knew that Eric and Nell were already looking through all the data available to see what they could find.

"I'm not an expert in Arabic," she admitted, "but there is a new professor of Comparative Religion up at the university, who is fluent in Arabic. I met him at the new faculty orientation. Would it be possible to get him down here to look at the writing?"

"That sounds reasonable," the chief admitted. "Go ahead and call him, get him down here."

Kensi called Sam's department head and asked for him to be released so that he could come down to the crime scene, describing where it was. She had learned enough about academia in the course of this assignment to not risk ignoring the chain of command in the university. She knew she would have to clear matters with the university president sooner or later, but for some reason she didn't have a great deal of angst about that. He seemed to be an easy going guy who was truly concerned about his students and the university. She had a sneaking suspicion that he might be Hetty's mysterious confidential source.

Ordinarily she might have just sent him a picture of the graffiti with her phone, but their cover identities didn't have a relationship that would justify that kind of conduct. Also she knew that Sam was an experienced crime scene investigator, and she wanted to get his opinion on the scene, even if she'd have to wait until later to get the opinion in private.

While they were waiting for Sam to make it to the church crime scenes, Kensi and the local law enforcement officers continued to investigate. They determined that the bomb had been planted on a trailer of some sort, which had been pulled to the church by some other vehicle and abandoned there.

This automatically gave Kensi several ideas for further avenues of investigation. Where had the trailer come from was an obvious question, as well as whether or not it had been caught on a traffic cameras or other surveillance cameras in the city.

She had to ask about one of these at least,

"So," she asked the police chief and the officer he was talking to, who seemed to be his right hand man. "How many surveillance cameras do you have in the city?" she was not prepared for the shocking answer she was going to receive.

"Four," the police chief told her.

"Only four," she asked in disbelief.

"Well, it's not like we're one of those big cities that has a lot of crime," the other officer said defensively. "We almost had traffic cameras at our major intersections, but the citizens voted that down in the last election. They thought it was too intrusive."

"Yep," the police chief chuckled, "There was quite a fight about that. You would have thought we were voting on alcohol again, the way the churches were coming out against the idea."

"The churches didn't like it," Kensi questioned. "But, why not, are they in favor of running red lights?"

"I don't think so," the police chief answered, "But they had some line of reasoning that never made sense to me. Something about human rights, and the right not to be spied on in your own home, or some such argument, wasn't it? "He asked his lieutenant.

"They tied it into the constitution, claimed it had something to do with the right to be safe from self-incrimination, if I remember correctly." The lieutenant replied.

"That's . . . interesting," Kensi said.

"They're interesting people, the lieutenant replied, shaking his head sadly.

Sam was still teaching his class, working his way through the slides, when the department secretary slid almost silently into the door, timidly trying to get his attention. She was a timid kind of lady, who was almost better at being stealthy than Hetty, without Hetty's sometimes semi-mystical aura. She was just a quiet lady who was good at her job and didn't want to be made a big deal of. Sam could respect that. She enjoyed being in the shadows, but he hoped that away from work she found her own sun.

He nodded in her direction, and turned to his class, explaining the last slide. This was normally the time that he allowed questions from the students for the remainder of the class time, but he had a feeling that he was needed for something else.

"Okay," he began, addressing his students, "Normally I allow class discussion and questions at this point, but it seems that I may be needed elsewhere. So for this class let's go ahead and take those discussions and questions online. I'm going to need each of you to go the classes blackboard site and make at least one original post about the topic of today's lecture by the end of the day. By next week I'll need you to reply to two of your classmate's posts. This will be factored into the participation part of your grade in this class. Have a good day, and stay careful out there."

His students seemed a bit spooked by his telling them to be careful, and he could see that some of them were already remembering the loud explosion that had marred the beginning of their class. They had mostly forgotten it during the lecture, which made Sam think that maybe he was a better lecturer than he had thought. At least better than his kids had let him think.

As the students filed out of the classroom, he turned to the department secretary.

"What can I do for you, Shirley?" he asked, giving her an encouraging smile.

"The department head wants to see you, you've been asked to go down and help the police department!" she exclaimed. "Go along to him, and he'll let you know what's going on!"

"How on earth can I help the police department" he asked quizzically.

"Go talk to the department head, he'll fill you." Shirley replied.

Sam nodded and continued packing up his possessions. Not only was it not a good idea to leave valuables lying around, there was another professor teaching in this room in an hour. She would not appreciate having to move Sam's stuff in order be able to teach her own class.

The meeting with the department head was brief; he stuck his head in the door and was given a quick briefing on what had happened.

"That big boom," the department head began, "Did you hear it?"

"I think everybody heard it," Sam replied.

"It was a bomb at the Methodist church downtown," the department head said. Sam was shocked, even though he knew that there was a group of white supremacists roaming around town, planning attacks. It looked like Callen's analysis was coming true. He only hoped that the map Deeks had seen at the library, with all the public schools circled didn't also have something to do with this plot. He had a sinking sensation that it did. That could be a very ugly situation.

"Who on earth would bomb a church," Sam asked. "Were there any people hurt, or God forbid, killed?"

"No, I don't think so. But they think it may be Middle Eastern terrorists, they found Arabic writing at the scene."

Sam rolled his eyes. Arabs were the first culprits most Americans thought of when something went boom, but to him this did not seem to be a target worthy of importing people from the Middle East.

"For now they just need you go get down to the church and read the writing on the wall. See what it says. That new professor in the criminal justice department remembered that you are fluent in Arabic, she called and asked for you."

Sam smiled at the thought that Kensi had remembered his fluency in Arabic, and admired her ability to work that into her cover. He would bet that she could mention a specific conversation they'd had at the new faculty orientation, and cite that as her source of knowing that he could speak and read Arabic. Other people on campus knew as well, but they were generally the members of the impromptu mosque he attended.

As he drove down to the crime scene, he passed the public library. He wondered idly what Deeks was up to, or more accurately what Deeks's patrons were up to. A few of the funnier library stories had made their way to Sam's ears.

When he found the crime scene, driving carefully on the rain slicked roads; he ended up parking next to Kensi's car. He was amused to notice a handful of books in the back seat; it looked like Deeks was bringing some work home with him. He knew that Kensi and Deeks were sharing one car, and that since the library was within walking distance of the house that they were sharing, Deeks usually let Kensi have the car, and just walked to and from work. He claimed to enjoy the walk, but Sam had an inkling that Kensi would usually drop him off on her way to work, and then swing by in time to pick him up. The two junior agents were becoming even more inseparable than they had been before this mission, something he hadn't thought possible.

As he crossed the street, being careful not to get hit by any of the police cars or fire trucks that were hanging around, not to mention the seemingly endless streams of people who 'just happened' to be driving by, or rubbernecking. He quickly scanned the crowd, looking for Kensi. He didn't know the local police force well; he had deliberately not gotten to know any of them, although he did know the campus police department's officers rather well. He often saw them as he was getting to campus early, or leaving late after a long day of grading tests and essays. He also saw them as he was jogging around the track at the campus's physical fitness center, trying to keep in shape just as they were. They seemed a dedicated bunch, but the topic of the professionalism of the local police force had never come up in what little casual conversation he had had with them.

Finally locating Kensi in the crowd, he headed towards her, stepping off the street before a battered pickup truck that he thought he had seen in the parking lot of the grocery store that Callen managed nearly ran him down. Once he gained the relative safety of the curb he continued on his way, wending his way silently through the milling crowd, wishing he had brought a hat to keep the rain out of eyes. He was amused to note that Kensi had apparently found one of the baseball caps Deeks liked to wear, probably left in the car. She managed somehow to make it look like something fresh off the runways in Paris, since she wore it with such style.

Just then Kensi saw him and smiled, not her usual welcoming smile, but more of a professional smile, appropriate for greeting someone that she had only met a few times and had a professional relationship with, not the close friend that Sam actually was.

"Dr. Hanna," she greeted him formally, "Thank you for coming down here on this terrible day! Terrible in both weather and for other reasons as well." she continued, glancing at the semi destroyed church behind her.

"If there is anything I can do to help I am more than willing!" Sam answered her.

Behind him he heard a snort of seeming disagreement, but when he looked he couldn't tell which of the various police officers, firemen, or just general citizens might have produced the sound.

He turned back and said to Kensi and the police chief, "Let's go look at this writing."

Once he got there he found that he could read the inscription easily. It appeared to have been drawn on the wall with lipstick. He turned to the police chief.

"Does that look like it was written in lipstick?"

"Yes it does, but we are having the material tested, just to be sure," the police chief answered. "We wouldn't want to assume anything, so we need to have it confirmed."

"That's a good idea," Kensi added, enjoying her status as a noted expert. "When we discover what it is, we can start tracking down where it's been purchased and see if we can find the bombers that way."

Sam nodded to himself, that was a good idea, and one that some people could have missed. Not Kensi though, she wouldn't miss it.

Sam looked at the inscription again. He he was able to read the words which were an exhortation to jihad that was commonly used by extremists. But there was something about the inscription that just didn't set right with him. He turned to Kensi and the police chief to give them his finding.

"Well," he began. "This is in Arabic, and it is a saying that is commonly used in jihadist circles. But it doesn't look to me like it was written by someone who actually knew Arabic. The letters are not formed properly, and some of them are actually upside down. It looks to me like it was crudely copied from a picture off of the internet. I'm sure if I were to Google Muslim extremists and graffiti I could easily find a picture of this very statement."

Kensi nodded, accepting his statement and already moving on, "And it looks like the bomb has the characteristics of something that was made by native born Americans with political agendas, like the one of the militia groups. Maybe they're trying to pin this explosion on Middle Eastern terrorists in order to divert suspicion from themselves and their organizations. I've seen that before."

Before she could go on, she noticed that the police lieutenant was looking at them dubiously. One or two of the firefighters who were standing around seemed to share the lieutenant's skepticism.

"What," she said defensively, feeling her hackles go up, "You're acting like you don't believe me."

"Well, we believe you, but in my opinion" the lieutenant said, "it's awfully convenient that this man just happens to know Arabic, and can let us know that it's ac common thing said by terrorists. We have only his word that it's actually not written correctly, don't we?"

"I'm sure it's in his interests to keep our people off his people's backs, now isn't?" one of the firefighters joined in, "Let's just say I have my suspicions."

The police lieutenant nodded vigorously, agreeing with the fire fighter.

Kensi's mouth dropped open, but as she looked around she could see that many of the people standing around appeared to be agreeing with the men.

"Well," she said, "I know that the FBI probably has someone who is an expert in Arabic, why don't we send them a picture of this inscription and see what they have to think?" She wanted to tell them that Sam was completely trustworthy, and that they could take their bigoted opinions and insert them sideways in an area where the sun would never reach them. However she could not do that without revealing her prior knowledge of Sam and how honorable he was.

Her heart sunk a little because she knew that waiting for the FBI to get back to them would take a long time, and might lead to FBI agents taking over their investigation.

Heading back towards her car, Kensi noticed that the rains were even heavier than before. She mentally thanked her husband for the cap he'd inadvertently left in the car. If it hadn't been there she would have not been able to have maintained quite the same level of professionalism with her hair wet and plastered all over her face. As she walked towards the street with the police chief beside her, she heard a report come through on this communications channel. He listened and cursed softly to himself.

"What was that," she asked curiously.

"It's the first of the landslides," he answered. "Streets department is already heading out that way, but they'll need some officers to help with crowd control and traffic rerouting. "

"Which road was it?" Kensi asked.

The chief of police named one of the three roads that led out of town. It headed to the closest large city and was well used by the population of the town. In fact Deeks and Kensi had talked about taking it to the next large town on their next weekend off, just to get out and spend some time alone.

"Well, I guess we won' be doing that now!" Kensi thought to herself. She was a bit sad; she had been looking forward to it. There was a seafood restaurant that looked pretty good in the other town. Deeks, of course, had suggested a night in a hotel where they knew for sure there were no surveillance cameras, an idea she both hated and loved. It wasn't like they didn't get up to plenty in the home they were sharing now, not to mention the apartments they had back in Los Angeles. But somehow, all of those places seemed like areas where Eric or Nell, or especially Hetty might be watching at any time. It would be nice to have some privacy. She made a mental note to find some time to take him away after they got back from this mission.

As the continued across the street daring the ever increasing traffic, the chief smiled suddenly. "Ask your husband about his day at the library, it sounds like they're having an interesting time." Then he got in his car and drove away.

Startled she almost tried to flag him down, wanting to ask him what he meant. But he was gone already, turning on his lights but leaving the siren off as he sped off in the direction of the landslide. She needed to get back to work, but had to overcome an almost overwhelming desire to go by the library to check on Marty. She settled for checking her phone for messages, and was relieved to discover that there were neither missed phone calls, text messages or voicemails from her husband. Taking that for a good sign, she continued back out to the university, to see what was going on with her classes. She really wanted to check on Callen as well, and check with Sam, to apologize for the jackasses who doubted him. She knew that she needed to maintain her cover and not give anyone watching her any reason to become suspicious of her.

Sam headed back for the university as well. He was outwardly calm and mostly inwardly calm as well, but he couldn't deny the annoyance within his heart at the way he had been treated by these xenophobic men. He reminded himself that that was what the town was known for, and that that was one of the reasons they were here. They were investigating a bunch of people who could not manage to stretch the American dream to cover anything or anyone that looked different than themselves. It still didn't make the pain of being disbelieved merely because of his religion go away.

Meanwhile at the library, Marty and his coworkers certainly heard the blast. It was kind of hard to miss. However, they had no idea of what it was, or where it might have come from. This lack of information did not limit their ability to speculate, and before Marty could even reach the front of the library Catherine was already manning the circulation desk alone, as she had dispatched two of the part timers to investigate.

One had gone to the front of the building, and one to the back of the building, and they were told to look for evidence or signs of what might have exploded.

Catherine had just finished explaining this to Marty when the part timers, Callista and Brittany came skittering back in. Callista was the first to report. She was petite, but extremely quick.

"There was nothing in the front, but Brittany saw something in the back!" she excitedly proclaimed.

Brittany had made it to the desk by then, "There's smoke off to the south, from what I could see through the rain! And there are police cars and fire trucks heading out, turning in that direction." Catherine and Marty nodded. They hadn't had to be told about the police cars and fire engines, the library was conveniently located in between the police station and the main fire department, and they had heard the various vehicles leave themselves. It had made quite a racket, startling several of the patrons. Even now the patrons were watching them interestedly.

Just then the phone rang, and Calista picked it up, answering with her usual level of politeness and professionalism.

It turned out to be their director, and she wanted to speak with Catherine.

Catherine listened and nodded agreement, she said, "Yes, I understand," and hung up the phone.

Looking around at the quiet library, she motioned them back into the work room. And told them that they needed to stay calm, and not let the patrons see them panic. She made it very clear that these were instructions she was passing on from the library directory, not necessarily things she thought it necessary to tell them.

"She wants one of us to monitor the local news sites, and keep the library staff up to date. As far as the patrons were concerned we just need to keep working, and not let on that we're worried at all. As she said, it's not like we know if there's anything to worry about any way."

In Marty's experience, when things began to blow up in your immediate vicinity, it was past time to be worrying, but he was willing to admit that perhaps his own experiences were atypical.

So the day went on, and information slowly trickled in. It was an extremely light day at the library, between the rain that had settled over the town and seemed determined to never leave, and the weird explosion that local news sources were not yet mentioning. Most of the normal patrons seemed determined to just stay home and not venture out, even to the library.

Marty wondered if the Callenmart was as slow as they were. He reminded himself to check with Callen later. Maybe after Kensi picked him up from work, they could run by the grocery store to pick up something for dinner. He lost himself for a few minutes, planning a dinner and starting to consider what they already had in the house and what he might need to pick up. Suddenly Catherine interrupted his day dreaming, which may have involved Kensi and some whipped crème or possibly chocolate syrup.

"Marty," she suddenly demanded, "Grab a bucket and head to the children's section!"

"That's not a good sign," he muttered to himself and he did what she asked.

"What's up?" he enquired.

"Leaks in the children's section," she answered. "We get them every time it rains, especially if it's a heavy rain that goes on for a while."

"Well, that certainly covers today," Marty had to admit. Upon investigating further, they were able to determine that two of the three windows in the children's' section were leaking, and causing puddles on the carpet. As well, there was a leak in the storage area, but not over any stored items. According to Catherine, this was typical for their leaks, and she reported it to the director.

As they finished placing the last tarps, and arranging buckets under the drips Brittany approached them. She looked apprehensive, and that was not good, since she was usually a very level-headed young woman who did not spook easily. Marty had not previously realized how useful or even essential this trait was in library employees, although he was willing to expand the essentialness to anyone who had to work with the public on a daily basis.

Catherine sensed the tension as well, turning to the younger woman.

"What's up, Britanny?" she asked.

The young woman seemed torn between amusement and disbelief, again, not an uncommon mixture of reactions for the library.

"Well," she began, "I just went out to do the bathroom checks." Marty flinched; he hated these, when the library staff personally checked the cleanliness of each of the public bathrooms. He wasn't sure why grown adults were unable to flush, or didn't know what would happen if they used too much toilet paper, but it did cause some speculation on his part.

Brittany continued, "And it looks like someone has stolen all the pipes, the exposed pipes. In the men's room."

"What," Catherine exclaimed, as Marty's mouth dropped open.

"Yep," Brittany continued. "All of the pipes leading from the toilets to the wall, and the urinals to the wall are gone." There was nothing else to be said about this rather bizarre statement, but all three of them trooped to the public men's room to check out the damage. The pipes were definitely gone. Even worse, patrons might have noticed the pies were gone but that hadn't stopped them from using the fitting for its intended purpose, it just stopped them from flushing the appliance.

Marty had never thought he would see Catherine at a loss for words, but it came close that day. Finally she sighed and said, "Okay get some signs and close off the men's room. Did you check the ladies room?"

She nodded, "Yes, all of those toilets are fine." Catherine shook her head and muttered something about small mercies, and continued.

"Okay, block off the men's room. Remind anyone who needs one that they can use the family bathroom in the children's section. Or go to the McDonalds down the street. I'll go call the director, and Marty, you call the police.

The police came, and seemed to find it hilarious that the library's bathrooms had been vandalized. Marty found it less amusing. The library director showed up, and was properly outraged. She and the city manager got together and soon had the news out to the staff that there would be a plumber on the way tomorrow to work up a quote for the city's insurance. Marty, Catherine and Brittany all had to fill out incident reports,

It was while Marty was standing out in the front of the library, chatting with the police who had come to take everybody's reports and were now on their way away from the library that he saw Kensi's car zip by, at her usual high rate of speed. Shaking his head, he remained silently glad that all the police in town appeared to be very busy.

That reminded him, so he was able to ask.

"Hey, as long as you guys are here, what was that explosion this morning?"

The policemen looked at each other, not sure if they could trust him with confidential information. He did his best to look harmless and trustworthy. It was hard for him.

Finally he could see that they had decided they could trust him. "Someone blew up the Methodist church," one of the cops said.

"What," Marty didn't have to pretend to be shocked, he actually was. "That's the church me and my wife go to! Is everyone okay? Were there a lot of causalities?"

The cops smiled. "You and your wife, I figured you were like all the other male librarians you hear about!" one of the cops joked, but returned to a serious demeanor at Marty's look. "No, the pastor was a bit shaken up, but he got checked out at the hospital and he'll be okay. The church wasn't even that damaged, but they say there's Arabic style writing all over it! Those damn Muslims aren't' content with destroyed their own countries, now they're coming over here to destroy ours."

One of the regulars passing by stopped to contribute to the conversation, "And our so-called president letting them in left, right and center," he complained. "But don't you worry, God is going to come down and sort all of that out!"

"Amen," murmured both the cops in unison. They did look rather embarrassed by the whole conversation, however.

Later that evening, after Kensi had been properly greeted and they were dressed again, Marty brought up the idea of going to the store to try and get something easy for dinner.

"Ooh," that sounds good. "We could try that new frozen pasta dish, or just get a frozen pizza."

"It's late, we might as well just get something out but we can stop by and get that new frozen pasta for dinner tomorrow. And maybe some garlic bread to go with it?"

"That sounds yummy," Kensi agreed. "Let's eat first, and then stop by the store."

"With any luck," Marty said as he looked for another hat, since he didn't think he would get the one Kensi had grabbed out of the car back anytime soon, "Callen will be there, and we can have a quick quiet conversation with him."

"That might be a bit hard to set up," Kensi warned, "We'll have to see."

"Yes, darling," Marty replied, "we'll see."

They managed to get something to eat, at one of the limited choices for restaurants available. It was a quiet meal, with all the people around them either discussing the landslides or the bomb. Kensi and Deeks overheard one group of people being assured by a man that the bombing had been clearly carried out by Muslim terrorists who were pretending to be students up at the university.

Somehow after that, Kensi and Deeks began to lose their appetites, and left early.

They did manage to stop off at the grocery store, although Deeks was feeling so low he couldn't even make his favorite Callenmart joke. They wandered in, holding hands and looking very lovey dovey. As they got a hand basket and discussed what they might want to have for dinner the next night, or maybe in the next few nights Callen rounded a corner.

Callen came around the corner just as Kensi leaned over to give Deeks a kiss, and managed to not say anything, but he did roll his eyes. Deeks refused to be dampened, he just grinned unremorsefully at Callen.

"Are you two finding everything okay?" Callen asked them, approaching with a professional customer service smile on his face. Kensi quickly mentioned looking for her frozen pasta dishes, that were "really easy" to cook. Callen smiled and led them to the place where those meals were located. He was even able to explain that usually they would be located in one particular spot in the frozen food section, but because they were new, they had been placed in an endcap display to increase their visibility.

They managed to have a quick conversation in the aisle, and then Deeks brought up the availability of an obscure spice he needed for his next "culinary masterpiece". This gave them the perfect opportunity to step into Callen's office to check on the possibility of ordering sumac.

The brief time they allowed to play out this charade allowed Callen to pass on the impressions he'd gathered during his hunting trip.

"I don't know, it just didn't feel like the Reverend and the Elders were actually there to hunt." he said.

"Were they possibly using the trip to test new members?" Kensi ventured.

"Probably," Callen considered. "But it almost seems like they were more interested in the location than the people. I just can't figure out why."

They pondered this for a while, but time was flying and they all needed to maintain their cover. They broke off their conversation, and Callen returned to his duties while Kensi and Deeks headed home with their food.


	7. Chapter 7

Chapter 7

I do not own anything connected to NCIS-LA.

Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to read this story! It is greatly appreciated!

Callen shook his head as Kensi and Deeks paid for their food and left, still holding hands and playing the devoted couple. The checker smiled at them like they were the cutest thing she'd seen in forever. Callen had a feeling that they weren't really playing, but simply letting their real feelings come out. It wasn't that they couldn't act professionally, but for this mission they didn't have to hide how the felt.

He worried that if something were to happen to one of them he would end up losing both of them from his team. Sam thought they would lose both of them anyway. He thought that when they decided they were ready to start a family they would both leave the team. In his opinion neither one of them would being willing to leave the other in dangerous situations without being able to have their backs; but that a baby would make them realize they needed to stay alive for their child. Callen was keeping an eye on them, looking for any signs of impending babies or career changes. So far all he'd seen was professionalism in public, and an overwhelming attraction and displays of affection if they didn't realize they could be seen.

Callen made another trip around the store, making sure that everything was still going well. It was a quite a responsibility, managing a store, and sometimes he felt like he was tiring to nail jello to a tree. There was always something, he couldn't afford to concentrate on any one crisis for too long, but had to constantly keep his eyes open for the next crisis.

According to his longest serving employees, one of the crises that he might expect was leaks in the ceiling or under the doors when the rains started. As he paused in the middle of the cat food aisle he could hear the rain pounding on the roof, so he decided to make a trip around the store looking for leaks.

As part of his 'rain preparations' he had already made sure that the anti-slip mats had been placed in front of all the doors, and made sure that the air blowers had been placed so as to keep the floors as dry as possible.

He had also detailed a couple of the young guys who usually dragged the carts back in from the parking lot to dry off the carts so that the people who came in to shop for groceries would not have to worry about their groceries, belongings, or children getting wet while they were shopping. Once they went back out into the parking lot, he thought ruefully, they were on their own, and he didn't think they would manage to get anything through the parking lot and into their cars without something getting wet!

As if on cue, thunder rumbled overhead, and he could hear the tempo of the rain hitting the roof increase. The blustering pace of the winds also quickened and he could see sheets of rain sweeping across the parking lot. Several customers packed up behind the door clearly unwilling to face the torrential rain.

Then he saw the Reverend walk through the door, and all the questions he had been suppressing came flooding back into his mind. He had been shocked by the explosion at the church. Not, strangely enough, shocked that there was an explosion, he had almost been expecting that, but shocked that it was in a church. After he had seen the map Deeks had discovered at the library, he had been worried that one of the schools might the target. He had listened to enough rhetoric about public schools and slacker parents turning out a generation of Americans who had no morals, consciences or common sense.

Callen could tell that the Reverend wanted to talk to him, so he moved across the store to approach the older man.

"How you doing, Reverend?" he began. "Staying dry enough, are you?"

"Yes, I am," the Reverend said in a slightly annoyed voice. "The Lord has been kind enough to send us rain, but then the enemy had to make his voice heard! I'm sure you heard about that!"

Callen lowered his voice, "You mean the explosion at the church? That was truly awful, wasn't it? Some of my customers go to that church, they seem like nice people. Who do you think did it? I know you said the enemy, but surely he had someone working for him, who actually carried out the actions, actually set the bomb."

The Reverend had no hesitation in his answer. "It's those damn Arabs!"

Callen pretended to be confused, "They came all the way here from the Middle East? That seems like a long way. And wouldn't someone notice them around town?"

"They're here anyway," the Reverend lost no time in letting him know. "They've been sending their people over here for years, infiltrating our society, and trying to get us to trust them. They didn't come just for this, there's a whole nest of them up at the college. They've settled in there and gotten the people who should be teaching our kids to be good God-fearing American citizens to be politically correct. They worry more about offending the members of a rabid cult, and not enough about making sure America stays the Christian nation it's supposed to be!"

"And they just accept them up at the college?" Callen questioned. "They're such smart people up there; it's hard to believe that they would be taken in. A lot of them come in to do their shopping here, you know, and they all seem to be very nice people."

"They may be nice people, but they put so much emphasis on being open minded that their brains have fallen out! Just like that church that was bombed, they claim to be Christian but we all know that that church is a hotbed of liberal propaganda! You're just too trusting, have you ever been told that before?"

Callen smirked and lied to the Reverend, "Yes, I actually hear that a lot." He was glad his partner was nowhere in the vicinity. Sam would probably be laughing on the floor by now. Even Kensi and Deeks might snicker a bit, but not where he could see them.

"Would you believe that that church actually has fags as members? And they have a day care that watches innocent children so their mothers can go out and work, instead of staying home like God intended. And they support the public schools, and even have women pastors in some of their churches! All of that and they still have the nerve to call themselves Christian!"

"I didn't know that," Callen made sure that he sounded sufficiently impressed.

"Then why did the enemy bomb them?" he asked, in seeming confusion. "Why wouldn't they go for a real target and try to blow up the real Christians?"

"Well, son," the Reverend replied. "For one thing, God protects us! God is on our side, never forget that! And for another reason, the enemy just isn't too bright. They probably though they were attacking true Christians, but they were just not smart enough to realize that those fools down at the Methodist church might call themselves Christians but aren't really."

"Well, that's good to know," Callen answered. "I hope we're upping the security on our church, just in case they get luckier the next time. "

"Oh, I'm having a meeting with some of my trusted staff to discuss security tonight," the Reverend said. "Among other things, we'll be discussing the security of the church!"

Meanwhile at the library: Deeks was standing in the men's room admiring the new pipes. He wasn't alone, it seemed like half the staff and a few random police officers who had been wandering by were in there, celebrating the fact that they had toilet access in the men's room again. The library director was in the men's room with them, trying hard to put a positive spin on the matter.

"Doesn't it look wonderful?" she exclaimed.

"Yes," Catherine replied in a dead serious voice, "The pipes are very cylindrical, and functional, and that's what we need them to be."

Marty had to hide a smile. He admitted to a certain amount of joy that they were functional as well. He had not enjoyed having to send male patrons to the family bathroom in the children's section. There had been a wide range of responses to the change in location, and he had gotten tired of hearing the jokes long before the patrons had tired of making them.

Marty spent the rest of the next hour or so dealing with the some of the kids from the local home school group. This group met once a week at the library for some educational activity that enriched or complemented their curriculum. Marty didn't usually have much to do with the group, but he had been drawn into a discussion between two of the older children about arches and how they worked. It had turned into a wide-ranging discussion with several of the middle-school aged kids, five or six younger siblings, a couple of mothers from the church group, the children's librarian, and a random patron who had an interest in ancient engineering.

The library had a selection of wooden blocks, and the group spent at least half an hour trying to build various types of arches. The debate about the relative uses of pointed versus round arches grew quite heated. At one point Marty thought he might need to intervene, but the students managed to come to an understanding. Together the group managed to build a miniature city's worth of arches in a corner of the children's' room. None of them could face taking it apart, so the kids begged Marty and the children's librarian, Alicia, to leave it up for a while. Alicia agreed, so the kids left happy. The brothers who had started the whole discussion, Ethan and Isaac, left clutching a couple of books about arches. They were already planning a home-based engineering project.

The rest of the day passed quietly at the library, and equally quietly at the university. Sam taught his classes, and consulted with his colleagues and students. Since it was such a quiet day, he had a lot of time to think about yesterday's events. He just couldn't make himself think that any of his students had anything to do with the explosion. From his experience they were a quiet group who wanted to get on with their education and their lives.

Today, however, Sam found himself dealing with something completely different. Not only was the student currently crying in front of his desk not one of his usual students, she wasn't even in any of his classes. Somehow this young lady had discovered that he had been a Junior Math Olympian in his younger days, and had decided to come to him for help. She was desperate to pass her calculus class, it was essential for her future plans, and was sure that he could help her.

Sam could emphasize, but as he tried to explain to the student, he was a very busy man. He didn't say it, but he was also hoping that he wouldn't be in his current position too much longer. He was more than ready to get back to his semi-normal life. He missed his wife and his daughter almost as much as Deeks missed surfing and the beach.

While trying to calm the student down, Sam consulted the homework assignments she had brought along.

"Here," he said reassuringly, "You're getting a solid B on these assignments; I think you're doing fine!"

"A B isn't good enough!" she answered, "I'm trying to get into med school! I can't have any Bs on my transcript!"

Eventually Sam got the student calmed down, sending her on her way mollified and still sniffling slightly. She was carrying an incredible load of classes and an exhaustingly long list of extracurricular activities, trying to built herself a great application for med school. Sam was able to point out to her that a perfect GPA might be more obtainable with a few fewer activities, and encouraged her concentrate on the ones that applied directly to her future medical career. However impressive her work with Habitat for Humanity was, the time volunteering at the free clinic might carry a bit more weight with the Admissions committee.

After she was gone, Sam was able to wander over to the Criminal Justice building. He wanted to consult with Kensi, and thanks to their interactions yesterday, they had a perfect excuse to talk. No one would think anything about Dr. Hanna and Dr. Blye having a discussion.

They managed a quick consultion in her office, quickly discussing their thoughts about the crime scene they had worked the previous day. They agreed that it seemed like a first effort from a group just getting started, and that if nothing was done the group might strike again.


	8. Chapter 8

As always, I own nothing connected to NCIS-LA.

Thanks again to everyone who has commented and read this.

Chapter 8

The next day dawned early as Kensi made her way back down to the police station for a meeting about the bombing. It was still raining, and it had been almost indescribably hard to pull herself out of her warm bed and away from her warm loving husband to go to work. Since the weather was so bad, she had managed to drop Marty off at the library on her way to work. It was possible for him to drop her off of course, but she often had to make short trips to other places during the day, and once Marty was at the library he didn't tend to leave until it was time to go home. If he did end up having to go somewhere else in the city for an unexpected meeting, his coworkers were very generous about giving him rides.

Almost as soon as she'd arrived at work, she was summoned to see her department head. When she zipped down the hall and stuck her head in his office, he was still on his first cup of coffee, and merely told her that the police chief had asked for her help with the investigation again.

"But what about my students?" she asked. "Will I be back in time for my two o'clock class? Everything else I can catch up with over the weekend, but I need to teach that class, it's my only one today.

"That's what I told the police chief," her department head said. "He knows that you've got that class at 2 pm, so go down there now, come back and teach, and then see if they'll need you after the class. If they don't that will at least give you a chance to start on the grading and the evaluations. Maybe even fill out that survey that the faculty senate emailed out yesterday."

Kensi blushed, she hadn't even checked her email yet, so she hadn't yet seen the survey yet. As she drove down to the police station, she noticed that the rain was continuing, and that there was a lot of construction equipment moving towards the road out of the city, the one that had been blocked by a landslide.

She knew that these construction vehicles contained work crews attempting to dig their way through the landslides blocking the roads leading to the outside world, and then to repair the roads so that emergency or indeed any vehicle could get through. The town was small enough that it did not have an airport. The closest airport was actually in the next town over, the one at the other end of that blocked road that those work crews were attempting to bring back to usefulness.

Once she got down to the police department the police chief called a meeting of all the officers to discuss the investigation.

"Here's what's going on," he began. "We'll start with what we know, and laid out the facts of the case as Kensi remembered them.

"I wanted to let all of you know that we've got an expert from the FBI on the way to help us deal with this situation." The crowd groaned, but Kensi knew that was probably a result of the annoyance of having federal agents come in and try to take over the investigation. Deeks had mentioned to her that most local law enforcement agencies didn't like having the federal agents come down, because the federal agents tended to come across as condescending and dismissive of the local law enforcement agencies abilities. It was not a characteristic that made them agents welcome.

"Like I said," the police chief continued. "They're on their way, but with the roads out there's a delay. They don't think our little bombing is important enough to get a helicopter in here, so we're going to have to wait until the road is cleared." That seemed to placate most of the naysayers.

"Also, we sent pictures of the writing to the FBI overnight, and their linguists confirmed what Dr. Hanna from the university said yesterday. That the writing looks like it crudely copied from a picture, not like someone who was fluent in Arabic or had it as a native language would write."

The crowd grumbled a bit, but Kensi has extremely glad to hear that. Sam had been vindicated. When she looked around she could see some of the same old faces looking dubious, as if they thought that the FBI agents agreeing with Sam might be equally untrustworthy in their eyes.

"And," the police chief continued, "We sent all of the bomb analysis data we'd gathered to the FBI, well, as much as could be transmitted electronically anyway, and they agreed with Dr. Blye's analysis that it looked much more like something that would have been used by a domestic terrorist, rather than some member of a middle eastern terrorist group coming over here to stir up trouble.

Kensi smiled, relieved that she had been vindicated as well. Some of the men still looked unsatisfied, but the majority were understanding, and nodded.

"Now that we've covered that, I can say that we don't have a whole lot more to go on, at least not until the road is cleared, and the FBI agents can get here. So what I'm going to need is a report from each of you emailed to me by close of business today. Mrs., I mean Dr. Blye, feel free to write yours from your office, I don't think we could find a spare computer for you anyway down here, and if you could please have Dr. Hanna write a report for us as well I'd appreciate it. The rest of you write your reports and then get out to the landslide and see what you can do to help. I understand that they are resorting to using shovels, so they can use the manpower. Dismissed!"

Since Kensi was not expected back in her office until later that day, she had ample time wander over to Sam's office to talk to him. She smiled as she approached his office, admiring how he had taken the time to decorate it, even though he knew that this was just a temporary assignment. Nobody was going to call Sam Hanna's tradecraft shoddy, he was thorough. She had had to explain to the people she worked with that she just had, sadly, no decorating ability, but that her husband handled all that for her.

Deeks, ever the method undercover operative, was actually planning to repaint a bathroom in a couple of weeks, and could frequently be seen browsing wall paper options at the local redecorating store. He had put up bird feeders in their back yard, and had earnest conversations with their next door neighbors about the best ways to discourage squirrels. When Marty left, the neighbors would be left wondering how the gazebo he had planned would have looked, and what the local birds were going to do without him.

Sam was engrossed in a conversation with a student when she arrived, so she nodded to him, and took a seat down the hall, too far away to overhear what was going on. He was speaking with two young men who seemed to be trying to get Sam to believe something. Sam was nodding reassuringly, making it clear from his body language that he did understand them, subtly encouraging them to keep talking. Eventually the conversation came to an end and Sam stood up as they left his office. Kensi sat reading a magazine, making herself as inconspicuous as possible.

Once they were gone, she put the magazine aside and moved to the doorway of the office.

"They looked intense," she commented inquiringly, "Is everything okay?"

"I hope so," Sam replied, "they're worried about a friend, but I hope that they're just over reacting. It's something I need to check out soon. But what can I do for you, what's going on?"

"Well," she said, glancing around to make sure that they were not being observed. She trusted Sam's tradecraft enough to be sure that there were no listening devices in his office, although she would frankly be more confident in her own office. However, Sam was the perfect person to arouse the suspicion of the group they were tracking, and if they were capable of bugging anybody on campus, Sam would have been the obvious target.

She and Deeks had swept her office themselves, the first weekend after they moved to the area. She smiled reminiscently to herself when she remembered how they had celebrated after finding that her office was free of listening devices. She hadn't been able to look at her desk without blushing for a week. She had a sudden desire to do the whole thing again, and in the back of her mind started to plan a way to get Deeks into her office soon.

Realizing she had lost track of her train of thought, she turned back to Sam, seeing him looking at her with the scary look that meant he probably knew exactly what she was thinking. It probably didn't help that she blushed as soon as she realized what had happened. She cleared her throat and started over, "Well, I just came back from the police station. You'll be glad to know that they've consulted with the FBI and they agreed with both of our assessments. But, it seems like some of the police and sheriff's officers didn't agree, even if the FBI did. It's like they think we're in one giant conspiracy."

"Some people get very set in their ways," Sam said, "and don't like to acknowledge anything that might challenge those views. Was there anything else?"

"Yes," Kensi continued. "The police chief would like you to write a report and email it to him. The FBI has someone on the way, and he'd like to have all his paperwork ducks in a row when that agent gets here."

"I can do that," Sam agreed equably, "do we know when the FBI agent might get here? Have we told Hetty, so she can make sure that it's nobody who knows us?"

"That's a good idea," Kensi said, "I should have thought of that!"

"I'm sure you were just too busy daydreaming about your 'husband'!" Sam joked. "I'll contact ops as soon as you leave!"

"Oh, the FBI agent won't be able to be here anytime soon. They told the chief of police that they don't want to send a helicopter, and the road from the airport in the next city over is blocked. The city is putting all its efforts towards unblocking that road, and as soon as it's open the FBI agent will be able to make it to town. And you have no proof that I was daydreaming about anyone!"

"No proof, but that blush speaks for itself!" Sam said.

Blushing even harder, Kensi left the office.

Meanwhile at the library, Marty was not thinking about sex. After the relief of having a working men's room again, the same group of library employees found themselves gathered in the men's room again. This time they were dealing with some marker-created artwork on the walls on a toilet stall.

In the traditions of such things, the graffiti was only discovered after the custodians had left for the day, leaving Marty and Catherine to be the ones who 'gloved up' and cleaned the lady's room. Fortunately the marker was fairly easily removed by rubbing alcohol.

However, they had to take pictures for the library records, so what seemed like half the staff ended up checking out the artwork. It had been a quiet day, so this was a bit of relief from boredom. Everyone had something to say.

"I'm not sure why they needed to label it," the cataloger was saying. "I mean, I'm pretty sure we've all seen a penis at some point!"

"I'm always amused that they have to make it so big!" Catherine observed. "Who are they trying to fool?"

The next day was a bit more difficult for Sam. He had managed to write and turn in his reports to the police chief, teach all his classes, and even get almost caught up on his grading, something that was like laundry or dishes and never truly ended.

However, he couldn't get his mind off the conversation that Kensi had unknowingly witnessed yesterday. Akem's two roommates were concerned because he had not been home the previous night. From what Sam knew of the young man, and what his roommates said, that was not like him, and they were all worried that something had happened to him.

Of all the Muslim students that Sam was mentoring, Akem was the one that Sam worried about the most. He was originally from Pakistan, but had moved here with his family before he stated in kindergarten. He was slight of stature, and nothing that Sam had seen would indicate that he had any experience in self-defense. He was also a bit naïve about the world. His parents had been glad he had chosen this university, he had confided to Sam, because they were concerned that he would not be able to function in the fast-paced atmosphere of a more typical university campus.

He didn't know Akem well; he just knew that Akem was a sweet, earnest young man with aspirations of being an engineer. However, now it was beginning to appear that he was missing. This fact was causing his roommates to worry, and they had both emailed Sam this morning to let him know that Akem had not come back to the room all three of them shared overnight.

Sam sighed, and began to formulate a search strategy. His first instinct was to contact the other members of the Muslim study group he'd been mentoring. He wanted to make sure that Akem hadn't gotten upset with one of his roommates, and then turned to some of his other friends for help. He had the list of students in his email contacts, so he pulled it up sent an email asking if anyone had seen Akem recently.

Next he contacted ops. He had already asked Nell and Eric to carefully vet any FBI agent that was coming their way. Now he asked if they could search the limited traffic and other cameras around town for any evidence of his missing student. Fortunately the university was better covered by security cameras than the rest of the city, so he was able to tell Nell and Eric where to look to get a picture of Akem.

While Sam was beginning the search for Akem, Kensi continued to help the local police department investigate the crime scene at the church. Some of the forensics reports had come back from the small lab they had in town overnight. Others had been sent to state level crime laboratories, being driven there in person by a team of local police officers. They had had to use small back roads to avoid landslides and otherwise blocked roads, and the normal four hour drive had taken nearly three times as long.

On her way down to the police station, a trip that was becoming familiar to her, as she had made it so often the last couple of days, she tweaked the route slightly in order to be able to pass the library. She wasn't sure what she thought she would see that would reassure her that her husband was doing well, but was satisfied to notice that the building seemed to be intact, with no flames or smoke rising from it, and that there were no police cars or other emergency vehicles parked out front. She guessed that would have to be enough to satisfy her worries about her husband for the rest of the day.

Meanwhile at the library Deeks found himself dealing with his favorite group of homeschool kids. Ethan and Isaac were still working on their ancient architecture. They were done with arches, and had moved onto aqueducts and other irrigation systems.

Meanwhile, their mother, Molly was browsing the cookbooks. On his way shelf children's books Marty paused long enough to ask if she needed any help.

"Yes . . . I think I do," she said quietly. "I'm trying to find some cookbooks. I'm just looking for a few new recipes . . ."

Marty nodded, trying to silently encourage her to get to the point.

"What kind? We have an entire shelf of cookbooks, is there anything in particular you're looking for?"

"Well, I'm just curious if you have any cookbooks that don't use meat? Just for something different."

"Of course we do," Marty began, happy to recommend several vegetarian cookbooks for her. She took a couple to look at while her kids finished picking out their books, and was in the children's room a little after he was.

His shelving duties brought him close to the table in the children's room where a couple of the religious homeschooling mothers had set up camp while their children searched for books. He was able to overhear what they were talking about. He was curious to see what they might be talking about, since he had the idea that the church Callen was attending was one of the more conservative churches and certainly one that encouraged or actually required homeschooling.

As he worked on shelving children's picture books, since they were on short shelves, he just accepted the inevitable and sat on the floor pulling his cart behind him. This position on the floor meant that while the kids could still see him, the adults quickly forgot he was there.

He could overhear their conversations with very little trouble. He was mildly intrigued by some of the recipes he heard them discussing. He even heard a little about Callen. They thought that he was a very handsome man, with a good job, who just needed a wife. They went on to discuss who they might match him up with.

But soon he heard something that intrigued him. The two women had been discussing how hard it was to keep food warm when they didn't know when their husband would come home, something he could sympathize with. He considered letting them know about the joys of crock pots, but the whole point of what he was doing was to remain inconspicuous. The conversation segued into how expensive food was getting to be. The other woman asked Molly, "Are you getting more money to cover the food for your extra guest?"

Molly responded, "No, and my husband won't even ask. He says it a privilege that the Reverend asked us to do this. He says it means the Reverend trusts us, but I just think it means is that the Reverend knows we have a cellar that's not attached to the house, and that we can get to easily."

"It could be dangerous, though, Molly," the other woman reminded her. "I know he looks like a boy, not that much older than my Charlie. But he could be dangerous; you've got to be careful."

"He doesn't seem as dangerous as I'd thought he would be," Molly answered. "He does everything I ask him to, but he's always asking if I can't just let him out, and what he's done to deserve this. I left him a Bible and told him to read it, but I don't know if he did."

"Well, there you go," the second woman said, "You've done all you can for him. You gave him the truth, now he's got to pick it up and use it! There's nothing else you can do about it if he chooses to reject it!"

"I'm just worried about him." Molly answered. "Just last night I had made pork chops and mashed potatoes and corn, and he would not even taste the pork chop! Just refused to even look at it, and barely touched anything else. I thought he was going to cry!"

"That's a shame," the second woman answered, "I've had your pork chops, and they are wonderful!"

"I'm trying to find some new recipes for him," Molly said. "Look, that nice librarian helped me find this one on vegetarian cooking! This way I'll be able to offer him something he'll actually be able to eat!"

"It does no good to cater to these people," the other, more judgmental woman said. "You should just let him go hungry; he'll have to eat sooner or later."

Molly demurred, and then one of the other woman's kids came up with a book he wanted to check out. It was a natural history book on crocodiles, and the woman looked it over very carefully before finally saying, "Well, this is okay, I guess."

The conversation drifted back into recipes, and soon they were back to discussing what books their kids should check out and what was for dinner that night.

Just as Marty got through the last of the picture books he was shelving, the women finished approving the kid's books and began to move towards the circulation desk. Suddenly both of their cell phones dinged, and they glanced down to see what had come in.

"Oh," Molly said. "It's a good thing that I've got something quick planned for tonight. The Reverend just called an emergency prayer meeting for tonight!"

"Probably something to do with that terrible bombing," the other woman commented.

Over at the supermarket Callen had just received his own text about the emergency prayer meeting. He was chagrined that he had not managed to stop the bombing of the Methodist church before it happened. While he had had an inkling that something was being planned he had thought it had something to do with the National Guard armory. Maybe it was just that they were trying to recruit more of the National Guard troops into their church. He had noticed several soldiers from the armory coming to the most recent church meetings.

But tonight was a specially called prayer meeting, and he had great hopes that the Reverend would let something slip regarding their current plans and maybe even drop a hint as to future targets or other planned events.

The meeting that night went much as it had been advertised. It began with a prayer that asked for God to hold his hand of protection over all true Christians in the community. Mindful of what the Reverend and said earlier, Callen realized with a chill that the Reverend believed that he was already addressing the only true Christians in the town.

After the meeting, Callen lingered, trying to see what the Reverend might be doing. He stepped back to let one of the mom's herd her children outside, calling back for her son as she stepped out the door.

"Ethan, hurry up, you still have chores and homework to get to before bedtime!"

Ethan hurried to catch up, looking surprisingly enthusiastic about homework. He was anxious to work on a model aqueduct, apparently.

As the teen boys folded and stacked the chairs, he noticed the Reverend gathering his inner circle around himself. Callen left the room, but as he did he overheard the Reverend say ". . . machine gun?"

One of his lieutenants nodded and said, "And lots of ammunition, too!"

Callen didn't let what he had heard register on his face, and made his way out of the restaurant/church. Once he made it to the safety of his car, he sent a quick message to Eric and Nell to check the security of the National Guard armory.

The two members of the ops team were having a busy night. They were already checking for information about Sam's missing student, Deeks was thinking there was something funny going on with some of his patrons and now they had directions to check into the armory's physical security.


	9. Chapter 9

I do not own anything related to NCIS-LA.

Thank you so much to everyone who has read this and more thanks to those who have sent me comments.

Chapter 10 -

There was another explosion the next day, a small one in a field outside of town. It did no damage but the police still investigated. Since Kensi had already aided the police department and had documented experience in investigating explosive devices, she was once again called down to help. The Police Chief greeted her jovially when she arrived at the station.

"If this keeps up, we may need to actually hire an explosives expert for the department, or send someone already here for some training." The police chief said. "We've never needed anyone before; I can't remember the last time anything blew up around here, other than construction and agricultural activities. It's just a shame we can't pay you for everything that you're doing for us!"

"What?" Kensi pretended outrage, "I'm not getting paid for this?" She and the Police Chief both laughed, "That's okay, I'm glad to help in any way I can. If you're feeling really guilty, you can take me and my husband out to a nice dinner when this is all over."

The Police Chief smiled, and said, "That's a deal, I'll be glad to take you to the town's fanciest restaurant. Of course, that's either the diner down the street or the fast food joint out by the highway!"

"So many choices," Kensi laughed.

After this exchange, they made their way down to the explosion site. It was a farmer's field, now reaped. Kensi, being the city girl that she was had no clue as to what might have been growing there, but the Police Chief took one look at the field, and was able to say, "This is a hay field, but the farmer was able to harvest it before the rains started. The only use the field might get after that is for hunting."

"Good to know" Kensi said, crouching to get a different angle on the damage in the hay field. "This was a small explosion, but powerful, "she said to the Police Chief. "Looking at the damage and the shrapnel, I would say it was a small amount of military grade explosive, possibly a hand grenade." She was puzzled. "Where on earth would anyone get a hand grenade around here?"

The Police Chief seemed to go a bit pale, like he had had a thought he did not like. "Well, sometimes people bring back stuff from their military service; it could be that this was an old grenade someone bought back from Vietnam or Desert Storm. We have a lot of vets of both wars living in the community."

"What about Iraq or Afghanistan?" Kensi questioned.

"Not so much," the Police Chief answered, "Anyone who's joined the military lately has tended to just keep going. Once they're gone, they stay gone, and rarely come back even to visit family. Somehow the town's turned into a place that young people don't want to live."

"That's a shame," Kensi said, "I like the place, but I can't see myself living here either." She laughed, "My husband is anxious to get back to the beaches, he's a surfer, you know."

The Police Chief laughed, "I didn't know that, but I guess it explains the hair!"

"Hey, don't mock the hair," Kensi said. "I love his hair! And the rest of him too!"

After this brief moment of levity, the somber look returned to the Police Chief's face. Kensi had to ask, "What's wrong, you look upset about something?"

"Maybe I'm just mad you married a surfer with weird hair?" the Police Chief attempted to joke, but Kensi knew that was not it. She tiled her head inquiringly.

"No," the Police Chief acknowledged, "The obvious place to get a grenade or other military grade munitions around here is the National Guard armory. I guess I'm a bit upset at the thought that someone with connections to our military might be blowing up churches in my town."

Kensi nodded, understanding the chief's reaction. Sam struggled with the same feelings every time they had to arrest a service member. Even Deeks was the same way, reacting badly when a current or former police officer was the object of their investigations.

"Well," the Police Chief continued, "Let's go contact the National Guard and see if we can get them to do an inventory. Let's see if anything is missing."

Kensi nodded agreement, and they headed for the National Guard armory. She drove and the Police Chief called ahead to try and get in touch with the National Guard commander in the town. They seemed to be friends, if Kensi could deduce anything by the fact that he opened the conversation by saying, "Hey, Clyde, I need to see you! I'm on my way, you'd better be there!'

Catching Kensi's eye as he hung up, the Police Chief smiled. "His name's not really 'Clyde", that's just what I call him. We were in the army together, back in the day."

"What does he call you?" Kensi inquired.

"Bubba," the Police Chief answered with a completely straight face.

"Great," Kensi said softly, "I'm off to inventory a National Guard armory with 'Clyde' and 'Bubba'. This might almost turn into a story that can stand up against my husband's public library sagas!"

The Police Chief laughed again, louder this time. "We looked at the surveillance tapes, you know, but we still can't figure out who stole their bathroom pipes!"

Kensi sighed, Marty wouldn't be happy to hear about that, he was still pretty peeved. The money to replace the pipes had had to come out of the book budget.

However, any levity that the Police Chief was feeling was gone a few hours later. He and Kensi and Clyde were standing in the middle of the arms room in the local National Guard armory, looking at the inventory list. They were beginning to realize with sickening feelings in the pits of their stomachs just how much was missing that should have been there.

"So," Clyde began. "We are missing four 50 cal machine guns."

They both nodded and Bubba said, "And six crates of ammunition to go with them."

Kensi winced at the thought, "And apparently four cases minus one of hand grenades. Why the hell did this armory have so much in the first place?"

She had meant it as a rhetorical question, but Clyde actually had an answer. "We were due for requalification training in the next few months, so they sent us what we'd need. We'd have to transport it all to Fort Ord to actually do the training. Part of the qualification is showing that we're capable of safely transporting our ammunition." He managed to look even sadder, "Unfortunately for our evaluations and mine specifically, maintaining proper control of all our sensitive material is also something we're graded on."

Kensi felt sorry for him, "Maybe we'll be able to find some of the materials?"

The colonel shook his head, "I've already filed a report with my chain of command. It wouldn't be honest to do anything else. They've got a couple of investigators on their way down as soon as the road clears enough for them to get here."

"The good news is, all the M-16 and ammo are still here," the Police Chief said. "And none of the classified documents are missing."

"That's a small comfort," the colonel acknowledged, "But it is a comfort. It's not as bad as it could be. I got a couple of new soldiers into my logistics section. They would be the first place to start, but I can't seem to get in touch with either one of them."

Kensi was sympathetic but at the same time itching to begin her investigation. As far as Clyde and Bubba knew she was only a college professor with some knowledge of explosives and forensics, so it wasn't like she could whip out a suspect list and start checking these people out. She could make a few small suggestions.

Kensi wondered how Callen had come across the information that the National Guard armory might be having issues. It was beginning to annoy her that she could not just pick up her phone and call. The restrictions that they had to operate under during this case were beginning to chafe. She was looking forward to wrapping up this case and getting back to the shorter undercover operations that had become routine during their standard daily work in Los angles.

She could at least call Nell and Eric back in Ops, and pass onto them the information that the National Guard had conducted an inventory. And that they had discovered that they were missing weapons, ammunition, and explosives.

When she was finally able to contact them, she found that they were already very busy. Nell promised to pass on the information. Eric mentioned that they were already working on something for every other team member, so it was only fair that she should give them some more work as well.

In his office across campus Sam was also feeling tension. His department head came into Sam's office for a discussion. The university had received several threats directed at the Muslim students. Additionally there had been a complaint from a member of the local Sheriff's department indicating that Sam had intentionally misrepresented the information at the crime scene.

"I know you had nothing to do with this, Dr. Hanna," Sam's division head told him. "I don't want you to think for a minute that I have the slightest doubt about your loyalty."

"I appreciate that," Sam answered, "but, I'm sensing that there's more to that sentence, kinda feels like I'm waiting for the other shoe to drop."

The division head signed, "Well, the Board of Regents is insisting that we carry out an investigation."

Sam was surprised at how angry that made him. "An investigation, really? What exactly am I being accused of? What are my crimes supposed to consist of, other than apparently being a Muslim on campus?"

The division head winced, "I know, Dr. Hanna, I know. As far as I'm concerned this is a mere technicality, and I know that that fact does not make matters any more pleasant for you."

He stopped talking for a minute or so that he could look at the paper which he had been clutching during the entire conversation. It apparently laid out the actions that he would have to carry out, all things that Sam desperately needed to be aware of.

"We're going to have to suspend you from teaching for the moment. I'll take your classes; do you have the lesson plans that I'll need?"

'Of course" Sam answered. Like he'd be stupid enough not to have his classes planned out. He wasn't an experienced enough teacher to try and wing it for an entire semester.

"You will not be under house arrest, or anything like that, but it will probably be better if you avoid campus as much as possible. Of course you will make yourself available to the investigators whenever they might need you, so please keep your cell phone available at all times." The division head continued. "That requirement to avoid campus unfortunately will include this coming Friday, unless matters have changed for the better."

That did piss Sam off, and he felt he had no choice but to respond. "Really, are you seriously telling me that I will not be allowed to meet in a religious service with people who share my religion? That is unacceptable. Would you tell a Christian professor or a Jewish professor that they could not go to their church or synagogue?"

The division head winced again. "No, Dr. Hanna, I know we would not do that. But given that the people you would be meeting with are also being held in suspicion, and that there have already been accusations of collusion between you and these students, it was felt that it would be best if you avoided any contact with these students."

Sam was appalled, and so angry he was almost speechless.

"I can understand your point," he said in a deep yet disappointed voice. He could see by the other man's face that he was getting his point across. "I shall return to my house, and begin to research my options." His division head flinched, and he couldn't blame the man. He knew that any person who had gotten as far as this man did would automatically assume that he was getting ready to contact a lawyer, or maybe the press. Either of those options could lead to the university loosing important and influential donors. In reality, however, he was planning to go back to the small house he had rented, sweep it one more time for listening devices or hidden cameras, and then use the secure lines he had set up when he moved in to help Nell and Eric investigate the case. Maybe the team in Ops had managed to find some information about his missing student Akem.

Meanwhile at the library, Marty was once again at the circulation desk. He'd realized that a lot of his stories were starting that way. "So there I was, at the circulation desk . . . ". He hoped to get through today with no new stories to add to his collection, although his stories would never come close to equaling the store of anecdotes that a librarian like Catherine had. She had said herself that their library was too small to really attract the real crazies.

Sometimes she would come in with a new story from a library where she had previously worked. Friends who still worked there would send them to her. Nothing could live up to the classic story involving a patron they called "The Mad Pooper" who had made a habit of befouling the libraries bathrooms to such an extent that they had eventually been forced to run a sting operation on the patron. They succeeded in having felony charges of vandalism pressed against him.

Today however was looking good. The patrons were all in pretty good moods. He thought it helped that he was working with Sara today. She was an older woman who had a lot of experience in customer service, and was notorious for not taking any crap from anybody. Marty had actually heard her tell a patron to stop whining and do what they needed to do. He had been torn between horror that she would talk to a patron in that manner, and envy that he didn't think he would ever have the guts to get away with it himself.

The patrons even paid their fines cheerfully. It always amazed Marty that the people with the biggest fines sighed and paid them; but the people who owed fifteen cents would argue for an hour and a half. They usually invoked the right to talk to the manager, and made frequent reminders of the fact that their taxes paid the library employees' salaries. Marty had never figured out how to gently tell these people that the term 'public servant' did not mean 'personal servant'.

Thinking back, he might have known it was all too good to be true. Maybe the universe was committed to giving him a 'library story' per day with which to amuse Kensi. She loved his library stories, and he loved telling them to her at their dining room table, her wide eyes fixed on him, dancing with laughter as he embellished the heck out of the events of the day for the express purpose to getting to hear her laugh.

And, as it turned out, it was not even a bad problem. Just one of the encounters that left him shaking his head. It all began with a woman he had never seen before approaching the counter. This was not unusual, they had a lot of patrons, and he wasn't always at the circulation desk. There was no way he could actually know every single one of their patrons.

She approached, and handed Deeks a small pile of books, saying, "I'd like to turn these in."

"Yes, ma'am," he answered pleasantly, giving her a professional smile, "I'll get right on that."

However, as he began to check them in he noticed a problem. She had made it a few steps away from the desk, but he was able to call her back. "Ma'am? These books don't actually belong to us; you'll need to turn them back into the library that owns them."

She turned, and the change in her demeanor was astounding. It was as if a fluffy puppy turned around and was now a slavering wolf. Marty took a step backwards in surprise.

"Are you telling me that I returned my books to the wrong library?" she snarled.

"Yes, ma'am, that is what I'm trying to tell you." Marty answered.

"I checked those books out from your branch in the nearest city, and they told me there I could turn them in at any of your branches." She told him in a forceful voice.

"Well, I can see where that could be confusing," Marty answered, "But we don't have any branches, this is the only library we have. The library in that other town does have two branches, so what they probably didn't make clear to you was that they meant any of their branches in that town."

"No, I specifically asked about this library, and they said I could turn my books in here." Marty doubted that, but was able to refrain from rolling his eyes. He had met some of the people who worked at that library, and he didn't think there was any way in hell that they would have said that.

"Ma'am, our systems are not connected; I cannot check these in here to get them off your account at that other library." Marty continued.

"What does that mean?" the woman said. "What would you have done if I'd just dropped them in the book drop? You'd have had to check them in then, wouldn't you?" Marty could tell that she thought she had made a point and won her argument.

"No, Ma'am," he answered her, "If you'd dropped these in the book drop I would have had to call the other library. They would look in their system to see who had them, and then they would call you to tell you that these books were dropped off here. They would ask you to come get them, so you could bring them back to where they belong."

"That's bullshit, why couldn't you just call me yourself?"

"Ma'am they're not our books, we can't see into their system, so we wouldn't have any way of knowing who had them out. "

"Why can't you just mail them back to that library, then?"

"Our budget does not allow us to mail books that don't belong to us back to other libraries."

"How much can it cost?"

"I'm sorry ma'am, but it's the patron's responsibility to get the books they checked out back to the correct library."

"What if I just leave them here?"

"Then, as I said, we'll call the other library, they'll call you, and you will have to come back here and get these books to take back to where they belong."

"Oh, I can't believe this! I guess that next you're going to tell me that I can't use my library card here, aren't you?'

Marty felt a tinge of suspicion. "Is it a card for that other library system?"

She nodded. Marty felt bad, but he had to tell her, "No, I'm sorry, but our libraries don't work closely together, you would need to get a card here in order to check out our books."

Still yelling, the patron took her books from another library and left, complaining loudly the entire way. Catherine came out of the work room, where she had been lurking. He turned to her and rolled his eyes. She smiled.

"Good job, Marty," she said. "You covered all the major points that you needed to get across to her. There was one minor point that you might want to think about adding to your spiel."

"Is this going to happen often enough that I need a spiel?" Marty asked.

"Well," Catherine answered. "It's not unusual. You just need to let them know that the items cannot be taken off their account until they are back at the proper library. Until they are taken off the patrons account at that library, overdue fines can and will accrue. You might have reminded her that the library she had those checked out from charges a dollar a day per item, and that can add up very quickly. They also prosecute for unreturned library items. I would actually love to see her stand before a judge and explain why it isn't her fault the items didn't get returned because she turned them into the wrong library and refused to make it right. But I can be a bit of bitch that way, so don't take your cues from me!"

"A dollar a day per item," Marty asked in amazement. "And prosecuting people who don't turn stuff in? That's a hard core library right there."

"Yes, but they don't require any id to get on their computers, so they're more lenient in other ways." Catherine said. "They also use filtering software, unlike us, but again unlike us, they have a big problem with people looking at pornography on their public computers."

"Yikes," Marty said, "We don't have any filtering but we don't really have much of a problem with pornography. I wonder why that is?"

"Well, I think the fact that we have a name for every single person on our computers helps," Catherine said. "Anonymity is something that people who look at pornography in public places appreciate. Since we know how every single one of these people are, they probably don't think they can get away with too much. I'm just happy that I've never had someone look over and see the Craig's List bestiality section up on the computer next to them."

Deeks had to agree.

The next morning, Nell and Eric were able to get back to the team with a lot of information. They had the addresses of the two women Deeks had sent them. Neither woman owned any property, so they had to look at the women's husbands. Callen was able to confirm that the Reverend did not encourage women owning property in their own names.

The duo from Ops was also able to confirm that Sam's student, Akem, had apparently just dropped off the grid. His phone was still in his car, which was abandoned at the university, He had not been seen on any of the few traffic cameras that were around the city, nor had he used his credit cards or contacted any one he knew, including his family. His family, as well as his roommates, were becoming increasingly concerned.

Since he had names for the women from the church that Deeks had overheard in the library, Callen was able to do a bit of digging, and to start trying to see where they lived and what they might be up to. He had met both of the women, and remembered one as being loud and strident, and the other as quieter and more subservient. He thought they had quite a few kids between them, but none of these facts were unique in the church.

With nothing else that he can do at the moment, Callen resigned himself to another long day at the grocery store. The length of the day is only emphasized by the knowledge that he had a long distance mandatory conference call with other store managers in the region to look forward to. They needed to discuss a new advertising campaigns and plans for Easter and spring.

He had known that businesses had to plan thing well in advance, but it still surprised him to get to the store at the beginning of the fall semester in august and find out that the Christmas season had already been planned by his predecessor. He hoped the store could get someone good to replace him, because he honestly did not care when in the rotation his store got the giant Easter bunny costume to use at events. If they were still there, he decided, he'd make Deeks wear it; he thought that would work out very well. That mental image kept him amused until it was time to leave work and head out for the church service.

Meanwhile, Kensi was having a quiet day at work, she taught her classes, graded papers, and finished off her latest report for Bubba, the chief of police. This report dealt with the munitions and weapons that had been discovered missing from the National Guard armory. Since she had been there for the inventory she had to write a report not only for the Police Chief, but also for the National Guard. The National Guard was not an entity that she had ever had to write for before, so that was a new experience. And as well, unbeknownst to either Clyde or Bubba, she still had to write her report for NCIS.

Just as she was thinking about these three reports, wondering if she possibly could just write one report and send out three copies, the secretary for the head of her department tapped on the door.

"Dr. Blye," the woman said, "The department head was wondering if you could just write him a quick report on what you've been doing with the police the last couple of days?" Outwardly Kensi agreed to this new request with a smile. Inside she groaned, and resigned herself to spending the rest of her natural life writing reports.

Meanwhile at the library, Deeks came in late, since it was his night to close. He didn't mind closing, even though it sometimes seemed that all the weirdest patrons in the world came in late on his night. He had noticed a dichotomy, either the night would be dead slow, or crazy busy. There was never a night when he might go home and say, in answer to a question, "Oh just a normal night."

Kensi came in to check on how his day was going after she got off work. Since it was still cold and wet, she left the car with him, and walked home herself. He'd protested that he thought he could walk a few blocks home through the mean streets of the town, but she just smiled and said that she would enjoy the walk, since she needed to relax after a day spent writing reports. Also, she said with a wink, she didn't like to think of him getting his delicate body cold or wet walking home through the rain. He protested, but she smiled the charming smile that always got to him, and got him to agree to everything she asked. He watched her walk away, enjoying the view way too much for a public library.

It was shaping up to be one of the slow nights at the library. The majority of the people in town seemed to be taking the recurring bouts of heavy rains with as a sign that they should stay home. Even the people who came in seemed anxious to get their items and get out. The only people lingering were those who were using the public use computers or the library's free Wi-Fi. These people were sometimes very hard to get out of the building, so he kept a careful eye on them.

About half an hour before they closed, Marty began his closing procedures. There was a checklist that he had to sign off on, consisting of things like closing the blinds, putting the newspapers away, and locking everything up. One of the items on the list was ensuring that any children that were in the library were with a parent or had a parent coming to pick them up. Any person under the age of 18 who was left in the library at closing was required to be walked over to the police station. This was not meant to be a punishment, but rather an acknowledgement that after the library was closed it was no longer a safe place for anyone to be. As Marty made is final check of the children's section he noticed a little boy, probably about ten years old, sitting at a table reading a book about dinosaurs. "Hey kid," Marty greeted the child. "Do you have a parent here, or are they coming to get you soon? We're closing in about 15 minutes, and you need to be picked up by then."

"I'm fine," the kid replied. Marty assumed that that meant he was with one of the people who were still browsing in the main part of the library or in the DVD section, so he kept moving.

When the time came to lock up the library, it had proved to be a quiet night. There were no people left, and he was able to lock the doors, get all the staff out, and set the alarm by 5 after. That was pretty good, and would have been faster if people could remember to flush. They never seemed to be able to remember that, though.

When everything was set, and he had made sure that all of the part timers had successfully started their cars and drove away, Marty finally was able to get into the car he and Kensi shared. However, as he pulled away he happened to glance back at the library and noticed that there was a shape lurking in the bushes next to the front door. Marty swore to himself and turned around afraid that he'd finally be able to check off another on his public library bingo card - "Child abandoned at public library".

He parked in front of the kid, recognizing that it was the boy he'd spoken with in the children's section. Clearly while Deeks had thought that the kid had left with his family, the kid had just packed his stuff and relocated to the front of the library. Despite the rain he was hiding in the bushes.

When Marty got out of the car the boy looked at him with a scared look, but didn't run for it. While Mary undoubtedly could have caught him, he didn't think it would be good for the reputation of the library to have it be known that one of the librarians was chasing kids thought the library parking lot and tackling them in the rain. As a matter of fact, given that he was a man alone, and the boy was clearly underage, he was going to keep his distance from the kid as much as possible. Marty looked at the kid and said, "Let's go, man. We need to get you over to the police station so you can wait someplace safe. Do you have a way to call home?"

"I'm good; I've called for a ride. You can just leave me here!" the boy exclaimed.

"No, man, I really can't," Marty answered. "Go ahead and call your parents so they can come pick you up."

The boy slumped, "I don't have a phone," he admitted as he listlessly followed Marty around the library building, and towards the police station.

Marty was ticked, "You just told me that you had a phone, dude! And you told me earlier that you had a ride home!"

Marty walked the boy into the police station and explained the problem to the person on duty.

"Did you call the parents?" the policeman questioned.

"No," Marty explained patiently, "He told me that he was good and left the library, by the time I realized that he hadn't, the library was already locked up."

The police officer let the boy call home from one of the phones in the police department. There was no answer, so they managed to get the boy's home address out of him and dispatched a car to go see if anyone was home.

About this time the boy's father drove up, frantically looking for his son. He had been meant to pick him up earlier, but gotten stuck late at work. The boy's mother was supposedly at home, but with no car. Marty would have loved to talk to him about his son lying to a librarian several times, and the fact that his wife was not answering the phone, but decided that it was probably best if he were to just let the police officer handle the whole transaction.

Marty finally made it home about 40 minutes late, and in a very bad mood after dealing with the whole situation. He couldn't be sure, but he thought that Kensi looked a bit worried when he made it in. He was just really looking forward to the weekend.

Kensi had her own problems. Once Sam had told her that his student was missing, she had attempted to get in contact with Callen to give him the information. But he had fallen out of contact. Nobody was able to get in contact with him, and they had all tried. His phone was on, but not being answered. It appeared to be in his car, which was parked outside the Reverend's church.

Meanwhile, Callen was sitting in the makeshift pews at the church listening to the second hour of a sermon. The Reverend was going out of his way to welcome two new members to the church. He said both of them were good men who had already proven their loyalty. They were newcomers to town, recently moved to the area in connection with their work the National Guard.

Callen's mind was drifting as the Reverend droned on. Mainly he was regretting leaving his phone in the car. It was a strict rule of the Reverend's that no one in the congregation brought a phone in. Callen knew that if it had gone off, or if it had been discovered in one the searches he would not have been able to talk his way out of that situation.

The youngest members of the congregation were getting more and more upset. Most of them had been trained from birth how to behave in church, but two hours of lecturing was a longer sermon than normal. Combined with the strained atmosphere that was currently noticeable in the church they were getting a bit antsy.

Callen had to give some credit to the Reverend. The man had never mentioned having any children, but he showed an understanding of children. Pausing, literally in mid tirade, the Reverend suddenly said. "I know that you can all tell that this is something that is very important to me. But it seems like the women and little ones are getting upset. Ladies of the church, why don't you take all the kids into the other room and get them settled down for a nap, or maybe do a little Bible craft." With thankful nods, the ladies of the church gathered their children and ushered them into the other room, which was usually used for Sunday school.

The Reverend only spoke once while the women and children were leaving. He clarified that the boys sixteen or over should stay, since they were nearly men and that it was time for them to see what men talked about. The teen boys looked impressed by this. Callen was starting to get a bad feeling in his stomach about the whole situation.

After the women and children had left, the Reverend turned to the men who were all that was left of his congregation, and began to speak.

"Men of the church," he began, "I know it's been a stressful week in the town. I know many of you have been working nonstop trying to get the roads open, and that you've been wondering why I've asked you not to hurry too much. I am able to tell you why now. Everyone here has heard about the bombing at the liberal Methodist church, but a very few of you in this congregation know that members of this church carried that bombing out."

The crowd murmured in shock. Callen's voice was included in the murmuring; he hadn't thought that the Reverend would admit it so soon, or so publically.

"You may be wondering why we bombed a church that calls itself Christian. Some of you may even know people to go to this church and think that they are nice Christian people. Well, just because someone calls themselves Christian doesn't mean they are. If my dog has puppies in the oven, that don't make them biscuits, now does it? You have to look at what people believe in, what they accomplish. What fruits are shown in their actions?:

"You might say that you know people who go to these churches and that they are 'nice' people. Well, even 'nice' people can be deceived! Even nice people can buy into the politically correct liberal agenda. It's easy to say that you don't want to hurt someone's feelings, but we are not called to say nice things to people, we are called to tell them the truth." The Reverend paused to take a drink of water. Callen, looking around at the other members of the congregation, was chilled by the rapt attention that was being paid to the Reverend by every church member he could see.

The Reverend continued, "People don't like to hear the truth, people don't like to hear the truth because if they acknowledge the truth they know they'll have to change their ways. As long as they don't say that it's truth, they can keep on sinning; keep on with their wicked ways. So they won't acknowledge the truth when they hear it, then they can keep on sinning. Of course, there's a reckoning. I know that, you know that, even they know that. They know there's going to be a reckoning, but as long as they keep their heads in the sand they don't have to acknowledge it!"

"But we know better, we know what truth is, and how much it's being destroyed by modern America. That church dares to call itself Christian but it has embraced things that no true Christian would believe in, done things that would cause a true Christian to throw up. But worst of all, they've allowed people to keep sinning, told them that their sin was not a sin, but acceptable. These sins are going to cause the person to burn in hell when they pass on and go to meet their maker, but these churches allow them to keep on sinning, not telling them the truth!"

"So that's why we did it, which is what you're wondering. That's why we made an explosion to get the attention of people at the church. Now the vast majority of people in this town are deluded, so we have to show them who the enemy is. We have to make them realize that the liberals and the Muslims, and the military which allows abominations are the enemy."

"So we have to start the war ourselves, but you should not worry. After a few more of these attacks, the good people who don't really follow the abominations that are prevalent now, those people are going to rise up and put a stop to it! Just one more demonstration will do it! And there will be proof there, proof that nobody will be able to discount. So tomorrow when there's an explosion at the armed forces recruiting center, and they find the body of one of the Muslim students from the university in the wreckage, they'll realize who their true enemies! They'll see that we've allowed America to stray too far from what we were, too far from righteousness. And they'll rise up and put those people in their places!"

"Our brothers here,' the Reverend said, gesturing to the new members, "Have managed to bring us more tools for the fight, tools that they have taken from the very seat of power! They've realized that what was once an army that defended the American way has turned into another tool for the enemy to pour out his filth. They are helping us turn this country around!"

"Yes!" shouted the men of the congregation, leaping to their feet. Callen leapt with them, wondering how fast he could contact the team. They needed to know about the threat to what could only be Sam's missing student. The cheering continued for a few minutes, and Callen saw a curious toddler peering around the doorframe leading into the room where the women and children were sequestered. A woman Callen recognized as his mother pulled him back, but unlike the child she was retrieving, he did not look curious, she looked terrified. Callen thought that she might have an idea of what was going on, and she didn't approve of it at all.

"Enough," the Reverend said, waving down the men. They slowly subsided, settling down into their seats. Most of the men that Callen could see looked happy. He was a bit amazed, he knew most of these men, had gotten to know them, and had actually allowed himself to think of them as reasonable human beings. Yet here they were cheering random destruction and the possibility of someone dying in order to create a destructive war. As soon as they were released from these rooms he would rush to contact Nell and Eric in Ops. He hoped they could quickly find where Sam's student was being held so the team could get him back.

Callen waited impatiently for the end of the service. But when the Reverend brought the prayer to the end, relief was not close. The Reverend led the congregation in a final 'amen' and then said, "And now, my brothers, I must ask you to stay here while the rest of our operations are carried out. It's going to get dangerous out there, and we need you to stay here and make sure that our women and children are kept safe. They are our future, and we don't let anything happen to them. Our women know their places and let us keep them safe, not like these modern liberal woman who think they can go off to war and leave their children to be raised by anyone and then wonder why they're little hellions with no manners or morals. We need to keep our true Christian women safe. Gather yourselves together to protect our future! We will not leave this building until we are sure they are safe."

"Well," Callen thought to himself, "doesn't that put a spoke in my wheels as far as informing my team about what's going on?"


	10. Chapter 10

I still own nothing connected with NCIS-LA.

This is the final chapter. Thank you so much to everyone who's taken the time to read my offering. It was a lot of fun and I think I've learned a lot from the process. Enjoy the new season!

Chapter 10

The next couple of hours went by extremely slowly for Callen. He was in that uncomfortable state where he knew exactly what he needed to do, but was unable to actually do it. Wild plans gnawed at his mind, as he tried to decide upon a plan of action.

To add to his discomfort, the women and children had been released from their confinement in the next room. The entire building was full of mothers trying to get their children to go to sleep. The children wanted nothing to do with sleep. Not only were they being influenced by the tense atmosphere in the church, but they were hungry and missing their usual routines and places. The youngest children were expressing their displeasure loudly.

They were so loud that it was making Callen nervous. He was afraid that if the kids didn't start behaving, there would be spankings. He hated spankings, even when he was not the one on the receiving end. It took him back to some of the less than stellar foster homes that he had been placed in. As he watched a mother try to coax her small child to eat a cracker, which was all they had, he had an idea.

Looking around he found the Reverend with his group of elders. They were undoubtedly discussing important targeting information. Callen couldn't bring himself to care. They had enough to arrest the whole group as it stood, and could work out the details of any further crimes when they did the follow up investigation and interrogation. But for now, he just needed to get out of this damned church and let his team know what was going on.

Callen stuck on his happiest smile, pretending a feeling of admiration for the Reverend that he didn't really feel. "Reverend," he said, approaching the group of older cranky white men. "I know we're needed to stay in here and protect the women, but the kids are getting hungry. I was thinking that I might take a couple of the teens and make a food run."

"We have food here, brother," the Reverend said sternly.

"Well, we do," Callen agreed, "but the women are talking about fresh fruit and milk for the kids, and apparently we don't have the right type of soap for the diapers." He didn't have to try real hard to produce a terrified shudder. "I sure don't want to be here if we end up with not enough diapers, Reverend. It could get ugly real quick! Plus, it might be good to give the young men some responsibility, helps them to build character and turn out to be the sort of men we want them to be."

The Reverend paused, and Callen could see that his point had been understood. He just wasn't sure which point. Either one of them could mean that he would be able to get out of this church, warn his team, and set in motion the events that would lead to the arrest of the leaders of this church.

"Do it," the Reverend ordered. "Take two or three of the young men, and my truck, so you can fit more in the back. Here are the keys." Callen took the keys and thanked the Reverend. He had hoped to be able to take his own car. The cell phone he had left in the glove compartment would have made it very easy to get the word out. At least this got him out of the church, and he'd work with what he had. Somehow he'd make it work.

Grabbing the nearest teen boy, he told the boy to follow him.

"So, what's your name, kid?" he asked.

"Tim, sir, my name is Tim," the boy answered.

"Well, Tim, you and me and a couple of your friends are going to make a trip to the store to get some food and stuff for the kids. The Reverend said I could take a couple of you guys."

Callen could see the teen boy straightening with pride at the thought that two adult men, one of whom was the Reverend, were trusting him with an important task. Callen decided to give him a bit of the responsibility for the mission. "I need you to pick two of your friends. Go around to all the women, and see what they're going to need. Tell them we'll get what we can, and ask them for suggestions."

"You want me to ask women for suggestions?" the boy said in shock. Callen was glad that he didn't have Kensi in front of him. If she had heard the casual misogyny in the boy's words, she would have given both of them a lesson that neither of them would ever forget.

"Who's going to know better what the kids need than the women who take care of them?" Callen pointed out in a reasonable manner. "If it were a little safer out there, we'd take one of them with us so they could tell us exactly what to pick up."

"I guess that makes sense," Tim said. He quickly found a pad of paper and a pen and started polling the mothers so that he would know what they needed to get.

When Tim had finished making his list he gathered his two friends and all three of the teen boys reported to Callen. "Let's go, sir! We're ready!" Tim said importantly, "I've got the list!" he sounded so proud of himself for getting that silly list that Callen had to smile to himself.

"Let's go!" Callen agreed, grabbing the keys that the Reverend had given him. "Let's get this over with."

It was, incredibly, still raining, but the kids still had a great time heading to the store with Callen. He almost felt like a father, or an older brother, or a scout leader or something. He considered offering them a trip to Starbucks, but then realized that for these kids Starbucks was just a place that supported liberal agendas. Also, there was something wrong with their cups. Were they the wrong color? He couldn't remember.

When they got to the store, Callen took the list and tore it into four pieces. He gave each of the teens a piece, and kept one himself. Grabbing a basket, he said to the group, "Grab everything on your list and meet me back here."

Then he pretended to notice the assistant manager, who had been waving at him. "Oh, I need to check with my staff, it will look suspicious if I don't".

While the teens disappeared into the shelves, looking very serious for what was actually just a glorified shopping trip; Callen turned to his assistant manager, and began a quick conversation about how things had been going at the store. Callen apologized that he had not been frequently absent the last few days. The assistant manager did not seem to be too upset. He was quite capable of running the store himself.

With everything that was going on, it had been a very quiet time at the store. There had been some trouble with teens shoplifting, but after assistant manager had had several people arrested, news had gotten out.

Callen got the groceries that were on the list after he finished talking to the assistant manager. He shopped quickly, but when he got done, only Tim had gotten done with his list.

"Okay Tim," Callen began, "I've got everything I was looking for, and I'm going to go check in my office, gotta see if there are any notes I need to deal with." Tim nodded, looking a bit confused. Callen quickly zipped into his office, standing so that his body was blocking the view into the room, and pulling out the emergency cell phone he had left in a top drawer. There was no time to be fancy, just a quick text to Nell and Eric explaining what was going on. He gave them the fact that the final target was the armed forces recruiting center and confirmed that a student from the university was being held by someone in the church, and was slated to have his body left at the bombing site. He included the fact that the church members were locked down in the church, and that he wouldn't be able to get in contact with them again.

He powered down the emergency cell phone once he was sure the message had been sent, and went out in plenty of time before Tim started getting concerned about this absence. One of the other kids had arrived, so Callen left those two boys with all three carts, and went in search of the third boy, Brian. He found him in the laundry detergent area, hopelessly confused by all the varieties. Even Callen was confused, but they broke the note down word by word, and then got two of each of the last two finalists, just to be careful.

Callen mobilized his impromptu squad of teenagers to the front of the store, waved them through the line, making sure the cashier knew to give him his employee discount, and then led them back to the Reverends' truck. When they made it back to the church, between all the kids of the church everything got carried into the church in one trip. They even put everything away.

Meanwhile at the library Marty was having a typical day. He had finished shelving a small section of books. The library pages, who were crazed ninja shelvers to a person, had finished three times as many books in the same amount of time. He never quite figured out how they did it so fast. One of them once told him jokingly that it went faster if you didn't worry about getting the books back in the right places. It sounded bad, but he had shelf read after that particular person, and all of the books were in the right places. Maybe he'd just memorized where every book in the entire collection was supposed to go. It made as much sense as anything else.

As he made his way back to the reference desk, Marty noticed something that didn't seem quite right. Someone had plugged a tablet of some sort into one of their floor plugs. This was not unusual; it was actually a pretty frequent occurrence. However usually the person who owned the device stayed with it. There was no one within 20 feet of this particular tablet.

With a sigh Marty made his way to the circulation desk to ask for help. Shakira was working, and he used her as a witness that he removed the tablet from the table and secured it in the lost and found. For valuable items he liked to have a witness so that nobody could accuse him of stealing anything. Then when the patron complained he had a fellow staff member backing him up.

Marty didn't think much of it at the time, other than to wonder who left an expensive piece of electronics just lying around the library, not even noticing when it got picked up. About half an hour later, one of the usual computer patrons approached the desk after getting off a computer. He was well known to the staff, mainly because he was usually pretty rude. Marty was working on his adult fiction order list when the man materialized in front of him. Marty actually jumped a little bit, surprised at being pulled out of his concentration on the New York Times best seller list. This guy had almost Hetty-like skills.

He could tell at first glance that the man was upset. He opened on a low note as far as Marty was concerned. He preferred when people said something or made some noise to get his attention, but Darth Vader began the conversation by slamming his hand down on the desk and yelling. "Hey, did you see someone pick up an iPad that was sitting over there?"

Marty recovered his equilibrium rather quickly, and replied in a level tone. "I picked it up; patrons are not allowed to leave valuables unattended in the library."

The patron actually rolled his eyes like a teenage girl, "I had it charging, that's why it was unattended."

Marty replied, maintaining an even tone and a professional manner, "No matter what the reason, patrons are still not allowed to leave valuables unattended."

Marty went to the lost and found, which was located in the work room behind the circulation desk. He retrieved the iPad, and returned to the circulation desk where the man was impatiently waiting.

"Here you go sir," Marty told the patron. "In the future please don't leave your valuable items unattended."

He snatched the iPad out of Marty's hands. "You better not have messed up the update I was doing," he snarled. Then he took his iPad and his bad attitude out of the library.

On the way out of the library, he passed Catherine, who was coming back in from checking the bathrooms for cleanliness and flushing. She glanced after him and shook her head.

When she reached the circulation desk she shook her head and asked, "What happened to piss him off?" Marty explained the incident to her, with Shakira providing back up and corroborating his story. Catherine shook her head.

"That guy and his tablet. When he first got it, he was playing chess with someone online, while he was doing something else on the public computer. He had the sound turned up so loud we got this awful noise any time someone made a move in the game." Marty and Shakira began laughing, and she continued. "It took a while to figure out what was going on. You know how it is when there is a non-regular noise over there in the public computer area. I kept hearing this noise and hearing this noise and when I finally figured it out I was pissed off. And then he got an attitude with me when I asked him to turn the noise off. Packed his stuff up and left. I half expected him to claim he was never coming back, but even he knew better than that."

"I would love to hold him to that," Shakira said. Catherine nodded in agreement.

Callen couldn't believe he had willingly returned to the lock down at the church. At least he had managed to contact his team. Most of the children had finally fallen asleep and even the teens were nodding off. The men had been arranged into groups, and each group was assigned different guard times. Each of the groups was being led either by the Reverend or by one of the elders.

Therefore the majority of the men in the church were asleep, as Callen was supposed to be. He as secretly lying awake, watching the group that was currently on watch pace the walls and check the windows and doors. The Reverend and his inner circle were discussing, in full ear shot of everyone there the plans for the attack on the armed forces recruiting center. Callen groaned and put his head down. He had done what he could; now he just had to hope that his team would come through for him.

At the library Deeks was dealing with a sudden influx of elementary school students, and more importantly with their parents. The first two or three who came in were easy, or at least easier than the later ones were. They were looking for biographies about inventors. Having one or two kids looking for the same information was not a major problem, but by the time the tenth or so student showed up, they were struggling to find books. There were only so many books in the library's collection that were aimed at children and spoke of famous inventors.

Marty found this whole situation rather annoying. "Teachers assigning homework that library does not have resources for." He mused, "Don't they check these things before they tell their students to just come to the public library and get books we don't have?"

"That would make so much sense," Catherine said. "But we can't even get other departments to not tell people that we have a public use fax machine."

"What?" Marty asked.

"Yeah, we suddenly had a lot of people coming in to use our fax machine . . ." Catherine began.

"But we don't have a public-use fax machine," Marty started to say.

"That was the problem." Catherine answered. "We always get some people who think we have a public fax machine. There are a lot of libraries around the country who have them, but the sudden influx was surprising to us. We couldn't figure out how so many people were suddenly showing up with incorrect information. Then we had the bright idea of asking some of these people if someone was telling them that we had a public fax machine. It turns out that someone at city hall was telling people who came in to their office to come here. Unfortunately, they didn't bother to check and see if we actually did. It was a recipe in frustration all the way around."

"Not a good situation from any angle," Marty said.

"The worst were the patrons who wanted us to go ahead and send their fax on our non-public fax machine," Catherine continued. "You know, we even had one guy give out our fax number and have someone fax some stuff to us. He came in later wanting to just pay us for his papers, and got very upset when we told him that unsolicited faxes that we received were thrown away."

Later, the library director came out to let the staff know that she had contacted the school to gently suggest that in the future they might want to check to make sure the library had sufficient resources for all their students before they sent every kid in the school over. She left that phone call in an incandescent rage. Marty could see the anger still reflected on her face as she told the rest of the staff what had transpired.

"She said that maybe we could put the books on reserve, and let the kids look at them in the library. I had to tell her that we certainly could have done that if we had known beforehand what books they needed. But, since they didn't contact us, but the time we knew we would need to do that, all the books were already checked out to kids. She giggled and said, 'Oops, I didn't think of that!' and then hung up on me! Didn't think of that my ass!"

As soon as Nell and Eric got the cryptic message from Callen they leapt into action. Eric contacted Sam, and Nell contacted Kensi and Deeks. They also kept running down the information on where Akem might be being held. Callen had sent them the listing of the church members. He had found, in his first week or so there a listing of all the members of the church and managed to take a picture of the listings and send that to Eric and Nell in ops.

Finally they had narrowed the list of people down enough to be able to find the name of the women who had been speaking in the library when Deeks overheard them. Going by the clues that Deeks had reported, they began to look and see where these women might be living, which would let them know where Sam's student Akem was being held.

Neither of these women owned any property. But what confused Eric and Nell was that neither of their husbands owned any property either. Finally Nell found that the father of the younger woman's husband was a widower who owned a house in the south of the town. Since the man was a widower, he obviously needed some help in taking care of the day to day household tasks. The son of the widower was working as a common laborer and not making a lot of money. Since he and his wife had six children, and had another on the way, they needed a cheap place to live.

The place did in fact have a detached cellar, which was located within easy walking distance from the main house. In fact, a sidewalk ran from the back door into the kitchen to the door to the cellar. This sidewalk was overhung by tall elm trees, and shaded from the street by rose bushes. It appeared to be the perfect place to hold someone against their will.

Once this fact was discovered, Eric and Nell lost no time sending the address to all three of the team members. They sent it at a high urgency, and it completely blew through any attempts by any of these three agents to keep their phones on silent.

When the alarm went off, Kensi was teaching a class, lecturing about the importance of maintaining the chain of custody in criminal investigations. She had just been emphasizing what could happen if there were any irregularities in the handling of evidence. She cited cases of criminals who got off on murder charges because key evidence was declared not admissible in the trial because a police officer or forensics technician had mishandled it in some way.

In the middle of this lecture her phone, which had been sitting on her desk next to the laptop she was using to pull up power point slides, buzzed with the particular tone that meant an emergency message. No matter how many times she got that, her heart still stopped just for a second.

She confirmed with a quick glance that the text message was from Nell, with a note for her to call as soon as possible. Kensi began gathering her possessions, while speaking quickly to her students. "This is an emergency; I'm going to have to go right now. You guys study for the next test, and I'll see you after this problem is taken care of." Leaving her students gaping in confusion, Kensi exited the room and then the building, already dialing Sam on her cell phone.

Sam had been grading papers at his desk at home, since he was not allowed to be on campus at the moment. He received the text from ops with a mingled sense of relief and worry. Relief that they were finally getting somewhere in the investigation and that he finally had an idea where his missing student Akem was. There was also a bit of relief that he could finally stop grading those damn papers. This was one aspect of his latest undercover assignment he was not going to miss in the latest.

Not only was he worried about his student, but now he had to worry about his partner as well. The vague feeling that Akem might be in trouble was replaced with the certain knowledge that he was in considerable danger. While he had known that that was a possibility some part of him had hoped that maybe Akem was off doing something innocent. That comfortable illusion was shattered now, and it was time for action. It was time to save Akem and Callen, both.

When he got the call from Kensi, he told her that he would meet her at the address they were given. He arranged that they would park around the corner, and rendezvous by the cars before they moved in. Fortunately they both had weapons and earwigs in their cars. Kensi let him know that she would pick up Deeks on the way and they would meet him there.

Deeks was on the reference desk when the call came in. He got several scandalized looks from patrons when the alert came through on his phone. He had just reprimanded someone for being too loud on their cell phone. Once he saw that it was an urgent alert from ops he no longer cared what the patrons thought of him. He grabbed his phone, listened to the voicemail from Kensi that had just come in and went back to the work room. He caught Catherine's eye and waved his phone at her. "I'm sorry, but it's an emergency, my wife is on her way to pick me up." Bless Catherine's heart, he knew that his leaving meant that the entire schedule for the rest of the day was going to be thrown off, but she didn't even wince.

"Go," she said, "We'll cover things somehow. I hope it's nothing serious."

Marty left the library and didn't look back as Kensi pulled up in front of the library. He ran through the rain and Kensi barely paused the car long enough for him to leap in. The car was moving again before he could get his seatbelt on. It felt good, he thought, to get back to normal. Smiling, he looked at Kensi and saw an answering smile on her face.

Fifteen minutes later, all of them were moving towards the house where they thought Akem was being held. Sam went in the back door while Kensi and Deeks came in the front. Between all of them they cleared the house, not finding anything.

When the house was clear they approached the storm cellar. There was nothing in the backyard so they concentrated on the door leading into the cellar. It was an old door locked with an obviously brand new lock and hasp. The lock required a combination, and they had no idea what the combination might be. However new it was, it could not stand up to Sam Hanna. Not many things could, as far as Marty was concerned.

After the lock hit the ground, it was only a matter of seconds before Sam had the door open and was heading down the steps, weapon at the ready and on full alert. Kensi was close behind him, also with her weapon out and providing backup. Deeks stayed at the top of the stairs, ready to rush down if it sounded like they might need help, but also keeping an eye out so they wouldn't get surprised by someone sneaking up behind them. They knew that the church members were planning on coming back to get Akem, Marty just hoped they didn't try to do it while his team was there.

In a matter of minutes, Sam and Kensi were helping Akem up the stairs. The young student was shaking with relief from being rescued. Other than a bit of fatigue he seemed to be in good condition. At least they'd fed him, and made sure that he had enough to drink so that he didn't become dehydrated.

They rendezvoused at the house that Kensi and Deeks were sharing. Deeks was able to pull out some clothing that would fit Akem. He had no intention of telling the young man that he was actually wearing some of Kensi's yoga pants. He was a slight young man, and Deeks clothes would have fallen off of him. Akem went to take a shower while the other three gathered around the dining room table to plan their next moves.

"Well," Deeks began, "We can leave Akem here while we go out and try to rescue Callen, we've got the extra bedroom, so he can even try to get some sleep, I'm sure he didn't sleep well while he was being held."

"That's actually a good idea," Sam allowed.

"What do you mean, 'actually'," Deeks said, pretending outrage. "Of course it's a good idea!"

Sam smiled, sharing the smile equally between Deeks and Kensi, "Of course it's a good idea." He agreed. "They shouldn't have connected this place with anyone, unless they somehow saw us together just now. We've kept apart from each other really well; they shouldn't have any clue about who you two are."

Kensi disagreed slightly. "I would still feel more comfortable if we had someone to stand guard over him here. How soon do we need to save Callen and get these people arrested?

"Fairly quickly," was Deek's response. "We don't know when they're planning on blowing up the Armed Forces Recruitment Center, just that that is their target. Of course, when they can't find their human sacrifice, maybe it'll slow them down."

"Maybe they'll think he's gotten away on his own," Kensi suggested, only to quickly correct herself. "No, they'll know something happened because the lock is broken."

"That's true," Sam said, "But we had to get Akem out. Do we know anyone who can come and watch over Akem while we deal with the rest of our mission?"

"Yes," Kensi suddenly said, "Bubba!"

Sam and Deeks shared a cautious look that made it obvious that neither one of them understood what she was talking about. "Bubba?" Deeks said cautiously.

Kensi smiled that smile she got when she knew something that the rest of the team didn't. "Bubba is the nickname of the local police chief," she explained. "I don't think that he'll have time to personally come out here to watch over Akem, but he might know who we could trust. Or maybe, it would be best if we get Akem washed and fed and then leave him at the police station to be watched over."

Sam disagreed, "I think that this town is pretty riled up about Muslims at the moment, and we're going to need some backup when we go into the church. Let's see if Bubba has a trusted man he can send out. Then we'll identify ourselves and get a squad or two of men to have our backs when we go into the church.

Just about that time Akem showed up from the shower, fully dressed in one of Marty's shirts and Kensi's yoga pants, and his own shoes. He looked much relieved. Marty pulled out leftovers from the previous night, and made up plates for all four of them, something else that seemed to amuse Sam. Marty wasn't sure why the sight of him cooking would be amusing, but Sam seemed to find the sight of him cooking comedy gold.

After everyone had eaten, the whole group headed down to the police station. They all took one car, with Kensi driving, and made sure to stock up on weapons. Everyone seemed refreshed and ready to go.

When they arrived at the police station, Marty was glad to see that it was a slow day. There were not that many police officers around, and those that were there were as busy as bees. They got right in to see the police chief, who seemed a bit surprised to see them. Marty guessed that if you didn't know what was going on the group he was part of might be considered a bit weird.

"So," the police chief, whom Marty now knew was sometimes called 'Bubba', said slowly, "Dr. Blye, Dr. Hanna, and Mr. Blye, and who is this?" gesturing towards Akem. Marty was somewhat amused at being called Mr. Blye, but decided not to get into details at this point.

Sam pulled out his badge and began to explain the whole situation to the police chief. It made, he thought, a rather crazy tale. The police chief caught on quickly, and set his mind to discovering someone whom he would trust with watching Akem. After a minute or two his face cleared. "I have the perfect person to watch our young man!" Akem looked like he was trying to decide if he should be relieved or terrified. It was an interesting combination.

"Who?" Sam questioned.

"Clyde," the police chief said.

Kensi smiled, "Perfect!"

For the benefit of the other three men she explained who Clyde was. Sam agreed and Bubba called Clyde and explained the whole situation to him.

"Clyde says he's always up for visitors," Bubba announced after a short phone call. Akem seemed a freaked out, especially once they got to the National Guard armory. He clung close to Sam as they walked into the building. However, once they were inside he could not help but respond to the friendly face that Clyde showed to everybody. By the time they left the armory he was smiling at Clyde and following him to a safe room, where Sam and the other two NCIS members promised to come retrieve him as soon as it was safe. Bubba had a team of his officers and a few Deputies from the Sheriff's department assembled and ready to head out to the church.

From Callen's point of view, the day was remarkably quiet after he and the teens returned from the store and the last of the children finally fell asleep. There was a brief burst of activity when the members of the inner circle returned to the church in a dismal mood. Callen gathered that they had gone to pick up their sacrificial Muslim lamb from wherever he was being held, only to find that he had disappeared from the cellar. They were extremely perturbed, and were inclined to believe the worst. They found it to be a sign of some monstrous conspiracy. Callen preferred to think that sanity was finally prevailing.

He had been through enough ops to be able to sense when things were coming to a head. So he hung tight and waited for his team mates to come and get him. The rest of the church members had no such sixth sense, so it came as a complete surprise when suddenly there was an explosion in front of the church, and armed and masked people entered from every possible entrance. They quickly got all the men of the church under control and began hauling them away to be taken into custody. The women and children were also placed into protective custody so that their physical and mental health could be evaluated.

After one final teleconference with ops everyone packed up and headed back to California. Their covers had been well and truly blown in town, and the team was anxious to get back home. The news that a team of super-secret agents had been living in their town, and taken down a plot involving foreign students, local church boys, and high explosives was the talk of the town for several weeks. Library patrons were amazed that the mild-mannered man they had known as a librarian was actually working in law enforcement. Kensi's colleagues in the Criminal Justice department were not surprised; they knew she had to have gotten her expertise somewhere. Sam's associates were more surprised, he'd never shown any interest in such matters. The employees and customers of the Callenmart were the most amazed. They were amazed that the mild-mannered man they'd known was actually a badass secret agent. One of the older customers remarked that she'd always thought he'd been hiding something, but thought he might have been a serial killer.

"Not that I'm not glad to be proven wrong!" She exclaimed. "But he was a quiet white male who was a loner and in his forties, and isn't that just the classic description of every serial killer you've ever heard of?" If Marty had been there, he would have recognized her as the woman who'd read through every book in the true crime section, and was constantly requesting more.

Epilogue

By the next spring, everything was back to normal. The team was resettled into their non-routine routine. Sam was glad to be back to his family and his house. In a move that surprised absolutely no one, Kensi and Deeks moved in together, while Callen went back to his Spartan existence.

Marty noticed that Patterson had new book out, and commented on it. Kensi wasn't sure what that meant, but Marty was half expecting the snarky comments his library people had made about Patterson's unnatural output. He had heard from Catherine letting him know that the homeschool boys were missing his input on engineering matters.

Kensi got an official certificate from Bubba and the entire police department, thanking her for her assistance. When the physical copy came, Bubba had appended a personal note of thanks, letting her know that one of the officers was being sent to advanced training in forensic techniques.

Callen didn't hear from any of his people, but retained a new appreciation of for the difficulties of supermarket managers. Despite much teasing from Sam, he had no desire to start a 'lucrative second career' in management.

Sam settled happily back into his routine, but was extremely happy to get an invitation to Akem's graduation.


End file.
